


A Thousand Layers Down

by Ysobelle



Category: VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Magic, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-19 22:06:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 58,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11907162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ysobelle/pseuds/Ysobelle
Summary: What is the meaning of life? Please answer in essay form. Show your work. You have ten minutes.Good luck.





	1. Chapter 1

“Jaehwan.” Hakyeon carefully examined a perfectly acceptable fingernail. "Did you, by chance, put a hole in my ship? Again?"

 

"I did not, I did NOT put a hole in the ship, Hakyeon, I quantifiably DID NOT except okay, yes I may have put a hole in the ship. But I fixed it! It's fine now. Can we concentrate on that?"

 

Hakyeon's eyes narrowed as he glared down. "Is there any particular reason I shouldn't strap you to the nose cone and leave you there til your shields exhaust and you turn a lovely shade of cerulean?"

 

"...I'm cute?"

 

"Jaehwan...."

 

"And who would fix all the holes in the ship?"

 

"They wouldn't need fixing if you'd stop blowing them, hyung," Sanghyuk helpfully pointed out from the copilot's seat.

 

Jaehwan paused. "I'm still cute?”

 

Hongbin all but audibly rolled his eyes, withdrawing his hands from the nav display and rising with a snort. “Good luck with that,” he tossed over his shoulder as he headed for the doorway.

 

“It’s true,” Jaehwan sniffed mutinously. 

 

“Whatever. Ready, Hyukkie?”

 

“I’m always ready to kick your ass, hyung,” their youngest replied with a grin, unfolding himself from the seat and stretching his disconcertingly long limbs.

 

“You mean you’re always ready to _try_ to kick my ass,” Hongbin snarked back. “Maybe one day you’ll manage it.”

 

Hyuk slapped Jaehwan affectionately on the shoulder as he jumped over the three steps down from the control board and passed by on his way to follow Hongbin down the corridor to the gaming den. “And maybe one day, Jaehwan-hyung, you’ll pull off some grand experiment that doesn’t blow new airlocks in the hull, hm?”

 

“Both equally unlikely,” Hongbin snickered, shoving Hyuk good-naturedly as they took off. Hyuk was maneuvering his elder into a headlock as the two bickered their way around a corner and disappeared.

 

The frosty silence that followed their departure dampened Jaehwan’s instinctive grumbling. He drew in a deep breath to start another round of justifications, but Hakyeon forestalled him.

 

“Jaehwan,” he said warningly.

 

Jaehwan let out a frustrated sigh, sinking down into Hongbin’s recently-vacated chair.

 

“I know, hyung. I know. ‘Be more careful.’ ‘Stop destroying the ship.’ ‘Grow up.’”

 

“Hey, hey, that last— I did not say anything like tha—“ Hakyeon began to protest.

 

“No, but you were thinking it. You’ve been thinking it for weeks.”

 

Hakyeon cocked his head, regarding the younger officer a moment. “You’re really telling yourself that, hm?”

 

“Like you're not?”

 

Hakyeon leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, completely serious. “You. Stop projecting.”

 

“I’m not—“

 

“You are, and you’ve been doing it since Oxilia. And I’m going to say it for the 431st time: that was not your fault. There was nothing you could have done. You did everything you were supposed to, and you did it right. But you’ve been looking over your shoulder since then like you think I blame you, and I don’t. In fact, I’m getting a little tired of you thinking that of me. If I had honestly thought you’d done something wrong, I would have sat you down for this talk five weeks ago, and it would have gone very, very differently. You performed all your duties exactly as you should have, I am completely satisfied with your performance, and, as you yourself would say were our positions reversed: you need to get the fuck over yourself and let that shit go.”

 

Jaehwan’s eyebrows disappeared skyward into his fringe. Hakyeon almost never cursed. Two swears in once sentence was practically his allotment for the month. 

 

Hakyeon rose from his seat, leaning over the console and tapping a smaller display, glowing blue in the dim light of the cockpit. “Going mobile,” he murmured over the small screen. “Alert me if anything moves, and cc Taekwoon.” The glow flashed briefly green, and a disembodied voice affirmed his command. He looked back at Jaehwan, then, and descended the stairs more conventionally than Hyuk had done. He paused in front of Jaehwan, his eyes too dark to read in the shadows.

 

“I am going down to my quarters to work on the schedule for the next few jobs. You are going back to your lab to figure out how we’re going to keep eighteen Corillian water-llama-things happy for five days in space.”

 

Jaehwan snorted. “They’re not llamas. They’re Corillian Star Swimmers, and they’re amphibious.”

 

“They spit when they get angry, and they’re ugly. I’m calling them llamas. Go figure out what’s going to keep them from spitting on me.” He poked at Jaehwan’s shoulder, grinning when Jaehwan finally, actually began smiling, despite himself. A moment later, he was gone.

 

Jaehwan puffed out his cheeks in a sigh, staring through the thick impact glass of the canopy at the stars glittering beyond the ship’s shields. His skinsuit felt tight, suddenly. Constricting. Which was stupid, because the damned thing was made to never do such a heinous thing, not to mention he’d added a few spells to make it even more comfy. Another sigh. His eyes flicked across the stars, the planets, limitless space. No, it probably wasn’t the suit, he mused. 

 

The lab door whooshed softly as he approached, recognizing him. He didn’t even flinch as a small, blue shape flung itself through the air and wrapped itself across his shoulders, half chattering, half warbling in his ear, excited at his return. Jaehwan absently reached up a long finger, idly scratching under a pointed chin set with glittering blue scales. The warbling mellowed at once, and slender reptilian limbs and translucent wings folded in contentment across his shoulders as he moved around the brightly-lit room, opening up numerous screens midair, and setting them to research water llamas. No, _Star Swimmers_. 

 

“Dammit, Hakyeon,” he muttered, causing the blue scales to twitch. “ _Koyaaaangi_ , darling. Don’t you trust me? So jumpy.”

 

There was a tiny huff of air in his ear, and he giggled. She was so opinionated.

 

She had little advice on the problem at hand, however. Day after tomorrow, their hold needed to be a giant amphibious habitat, and while she was fastidious in her habits, quick baths were her limit. She tucked her head under a forelimb, shrugged further into Jaehwan’s collarbones, and went back to sleep.

 

Jaehwan, however, felt the beginnings of excitement in his brain, despite the comparative mundanity of the task. While _The Baegilmong_ was a standard hybrid cruiser/cargo ship, she had a reputation as one of the top courier ships in the region, especially for live transport. Her hold could be physically reconfigured in limitless ways for inanimate payloads, live loads, special-needs humans, or even humans willing to spend an inordinate amount of cash: and most of that reputation rested upon the shoulders of one Lee Jaehwan.

 

Anyone could do a holographic environment so real you could get vertigo from a non-existent mountain. The science had become art decades ago. But though you could taste the apple you pulled from the tree, or smell the grass you sat on, neither organic simulation was real: the apple wouldn’t provide any nutrients, and the grass stains would disappear as soon as you ended the program. It was simple fact, and holo companies presented it as a benefit: eat all you want at your fantasy buffet: it would taste great, but you’d never have to worry about a single calorie. It wasn’t a problem. Except to Jaehwan.

 

He remembered the specific moment he’d discovered none of it was real— wasn’t _supposed_ to be real. He was four. He’d had an ice cream with his parents on a sim boardwalk in the sun: a confection big as his head, and he ate and ate until his stomach was painful but it was the best thing he’d ever eaten, and he didn’t want to stop. He wanted to keep it in his belly the rest of the evening, and go to sleep still full. But then they left the sim, and just like that, it was gone. All his lovely, monstrous ice cream, gone, and his tummy empty. He cried for half a hour until his brothers distracted him with funny faces and hugs.

 

He got slightly more pragmatic as he got older. By the time he was eight, he’d merely thought how awesome it would be to have dinner on a pirate ship with Captain Blood without having to come crashing back to reality for meatloaf and kimchi with his parents and brothers. _What a waste_ , he thought. _I’ve done this already! Someone should do something about this._

 

And then it got weird.

 

He’d been climbing a giant rose tree in a Sailor Tiger Adventure sim when he’d put a giant thorn through his hand. It should have been impossible. It should have been completely, utterly impossible. Nevertheless, his twelve-year-old brain saw blood, and he sent up an instinctive wail that the sim’s computers correctly registered as serious pain, and he found himself back on the grass, with a giant rabbit nurse beside him (actually, a servo robot appropriately disguised), its nose twitching violently in dismay. It closed the sim down immediately, and as it sprayed his hand with Medi-Fix, his parents came bursting through the door, wide-eyed and out of breath. His mother fussed, and his father blustered: actual injuries _should have been impossible_. There was no thorn. There was no tree. How, then, was their son sitting on the floor of blank sim bay with a hole in his palm? The entire play complex was shut down, inspectors were called, whole banks of computers were taken apart and the Family Fun Park and Galaxy Zoo stayed closed for a whole week, but no one had ever been able to get to the bottom of it.

 

Jaehwan’s mother read the reports the company sent a month later, her lips pressed together and her expression tight.

 

Two months after that, Jaehwan had his first lesson with a tutor in the field of Non-Physical Energies.

 

Magic.

 

He had some talent in the areas of energy transference, his teacher soon explained to his mother. Though not common, it wasn’t wholly unheard-of. He’d be able to impart true solidity into holo objects. Not on a grand scale, and not for every kind of object. It seemed limited to organics, at least for now. But it was a highly useful skill, and quite rare. If he worked at it, he’d probably get snapped up by one of the game developing mega corps, or a high-end boutique retailer, or even a University.

 

So of course, he’d wound up on a space ship, in his own lab, experimenting all day, and occasionally blowing things up. 

 

It was an ideal job, really, even if his mother never quite understood. He’d developed his skills to a point where he could make food real. Real enough to provide nutritional value. Again, not on a huge scale, but to the point where the crew would get together once a week in the holo, conjure up whatever they wanted to eat, and wait for Jaehwan to touch it. Being Jaehwan, this usually— and unnecessarily— involved him sticking his finger directly into the center of everyone’s dinner, followed by another member of the crew waiting until he was quite done and then slinging him around the room. They all took turns. 

 

It also meant that their overhead for feed on live cargo was exactly nothing. Jaehwan could, given enough research and lead time, create a savannah for herbivores with grass they could eat. He could build an authentic Golden Age Masserian Banqueting Hall and make the holo servers bring out dishes no one had eaten in 1,200 years. And he could come up with a semi-aquatic habitat for fuzzy, amphibious water llamas that would probably keep them happy enough to not spit on his captain.

 

If he could just figure out what the hell they wanted to eat.

 

Hours had passed when there was a gentle chime at the door, and Jaehwan sat up quickly enough to hear more than a couple of pops in his spine. His skinsuit adjusted quickly, applying tiny electrical charges to the muscles there, easing any soreness. He reached out towards the door, twisted his hand, and the door whooshed open.

 

“Ah, hyung! Come to check I haven’t blown anything up lately?”

 

The tall, slender man lounging in the doorway took a long sip through the straw of his drink. “Have you?”

 

Jaehwan gasped softly, his hand clutching the black nano-weave of his suit over his heart. “Taekwoon-hyung. You wound me. You hurt my soul. You— you strike daggers directly through my very being!”

 

Taekwoon’s face remained completely impassive. “Well, have you?” he asked around the straw.

 

“Not in at least six hours.”

 

“Good. Then Hakyeon-hyung won’t kill you if you come to dinner.”

 

The younger man rose, stretching, and rolled up several small display screens scattered across the broad white worktable, slotting them into a trench along one side. Carefully, he reached up to his neck and untangled the delicate blue body wrapped around him like a particularly complicated necklace, and moved to put his snoozing companion into her padded nest up on a shelf.

 

“Koyangi. Koyangi, love. Come on. Daddy has to go for a bit. There’s a lovely girl. Stay here, and I’ll come back after dinner, mm? There you go.” With a birdlike chirp and a rustle of paper-thin wings, she settled her body in coils, and went right back to sleep.

 

Jaehwan didn’t miss the sharp way Taekwoon watched him with his little darling. “You should have one, you know,” he remarked to the older man as they took off down the corridor towards the mess. “You need one.”

 

“Too busy,” Taekwoon grunted.

 

“Ha! Too busy? It’s not like you need to walk them, hyung. They don’t cause any trouble.”

 

Taekwoon tossed his now-empty cup into a receptacle along the wall, and slung his arm around Jaehwan’s neck, corralling him into the colourful openness of the communal eating area.

 

“Trouble, Jaehwan-ah? Isn’t that what we have you for?”

 

 

 

 

Technically, the ship could fly itself. Technically. Which meant that as long as their mission aims were maintained, its six crew members could devote almost as much time as they liked to their individual pursuits: Hongbin to the study of interstellar navigation techniques, Ravi to linguistics and translations, Jaehwan to not blowing up his lab, and so on. But their captain had always been a social sort, and disliked the idea of the six of them spending all their time alone, never interacting, hurtling through space together, but in isolation— Hakyeon never got past that point in his speech, as his crew, as much family as coworkers, had usually mocked him into silence by then. Nevertheless, one thing he did insist on, barring emergencies, was that they all have dinner together each night. Hongbin especially whined about it, but then, he was usually the first there, making sure the table was set and the salt full, all while doing his best to look like he was doing no such thing.

 

One thing for which a communal dinner was useful, however, was Hakyeon laying out their itinerary for the coming weeks: what passengers or cargo they’d be taking on for transport, and the logistics of getting from Point A to Point B via Points L through R.

 

Taekwoon, as second in command, snapped his PAU out of a pocket of his skinsuit as Hakyeon ran through the proposed schedule, tapping it to record his captain’s voice and input the dates and destinations and cargoes into the ship’s calendar, occasionally frowning and murmuring conflicts or questions, staring at the screen until everything was classed and codified, their next few weeks set. The other four men sat back in their chairs, enjoying post-prandial drinks and occasionally dropping in snarky comments about Hakyeon’s superb secretarial skills, until their captain turned a cool eye on his crew and snarked back, pointing out that such humble skills at least got them all paid.

 

“Ah, but hyung!” Sanhyuk mock-gasped, fluttering his lashes and clasping his hands over his heart, “What about adventure and drama and excitement?”

 

“Isn’t that why we have Jaehwan-hyung and his lab?” Hongbin asked, eyes guileless.

 

Before Jaehwan could even draw an indignant breath, Hakyeon was rolling over him. “After we offload the spitting llama things—“

 

“ _Corillian Star Swimmers_ —“

 

“Whatever, Jyan-ah. When they’re off the ship, we’re picking up a cargo from what’s apparently the largest research lab on Tekis. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve had to send ahead all our names and security clearances and I’m just waiting for them to ask for blood samples.” 

 

Wonshik, leafing through linguistics files on his PAU, looked up sharply. “What the hell are we hauling around that’s that secret? Blood samples, hyung?”

 

“I was being hyperbolic. Barely.” Hakyeon shrugged. “Not only do I not know, I’m not sure I care. Something information-based, so we don’t need to feed it or talk to it or throw any special spells over it. We just need to deliver it to Darrow, and go on our way. And collect a very nice fee.”

 

Wonshik shrugged and returned to his files. If he couldn’t communicate with something, or learn a new language from it, or practise an existing language, he lost interest fairly quickly. He made exceptions, however, if it had a decent music collection.

 

“Jaehwan, you’ll be taking point on whatever this is, all right? I’m going to have you talk to their shipping agent. Find out what we need to do, if anything. All right?”

 

Jaehwan nodded, finding his ears turning a little pink. Being told you were still trusted was one thing. Being shown that was nicer. He sat through the rest of the rundown feeling much more at ease, occasionally flicking crumbs at Hyuk when the latter wasn’t looking and subtly indicating Hongbin had done it, until Hakyeon wound down.

 

“Taekwoon, have I missed anything?”

 

The Second hummed idly, scanning his notes. “Water llamas,” he flicked a small, wicked smile at Jaehwan, “shipment from Tekis to Darrow, anthropology team from Darrow to Plinth, hop from Plinth to Jericho for a shipment to Reta. Those are all our primaries; usual assortment of supplies from point A to point B for our secondaries.”

 

“Good. Anything else, anyone?”

 

“How long will we be on Darrow?” Wonshik asked, looking up again from his files. “I’d love to get one of my speech synthesizers repaired.”

 

“I’d only planned on a couple of hours,” Hakyeon replied. “Can Jaehwan take a look at it first?”

 

Wonshik grinned. “Only if he promises not to make it explode.”

 

Jaehwan abandoned subtlety and launched a dinner roll at the Communications Officer, hitting him squarely in the head even as Wonshik doubled over in laughter. Raucous cries bounced off the walls as Hakyeon rolled his eyes, long experience telling him there was precious little point in trying to wade in. With a grin of his own, he nodded at Taekwoon and rose, lobbing the ricocheted roll directly into the back of Hongbin’s head, then pointing the blame at Hyuk as he made his escape.

 

“I don’t want to see any crumbs on the floor in the morning!” he sang as a parting shot. He didn’t miss the hollow thunk as some random foodstuff hit the door as it closed behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What?” Jaehwan affected innocence. “I didn’t do anything, Captain. But it is making noise. I think we’re duty-bound to make sure whatever this is isn’t a danger to our ship. That’s in our contract.”

“Have I told you lately how happy I am I don’t have your job, Hyukkie?”

 

There was a sound halfway between a sigh and a growl as the younger man carefully eased himself into a lounger in the common room. “In the last hour, or in the last ten minutes? Because if we’re going by minutes, no, and if we’re going by hours, you’re at about eighteen times.”

 

Jaehwan grinned and blew kisses, thoroughly enjoying Hyuk’s sour look. All the aspects of getting cargo on and off the ship, and turnover for the next cargo, fell to Hyuk. Once whatever they were shipping was in the hold, keeping it happy/warm/fed/chilled/mixed/static/amused was Jaehwan’s job. In the end, the Star Swimmers had been perfectly behaved for five days straight, right up until Hyuk had to maneuver them into a portage tank to offload them. Then, just as Hakyeon had warned, they spit. He had not mentioned how much their spit stank. 

 

Within minutes, everyone but poor Hyuk had discovered something requiring urgent attention at the furthest end of the ship, leaving their youngest to deal with the requisite tank, cranes, Tekis dock crew, and, of course, eighteen Corillian Star Swimmers, literally spitting mad. He had the cleanup servos swarming instantly, inches behind their departing guests, but the smell seemed to linger in the nose. Jaehwan could almost hear Hyuk’s skinsuit going into self-cleaning overdrive, but he imagined there would be a lot of very long, hot showers later, once their new cargo was aboard. Speaking of which:

 

“When does this mysterious new primary cargo arrive?” Jaehwan asked.

 

Hyuk’s eyes flicked towards the clock on the lounge wall. “Two hours. We were early with the Star Swimmers. G-d, what a stupid name. Almost as stupid as they are, though, so I guess it fits.”

 

“You’re stupid,” Jaewhwan giggled.

 

“Don’t make me toss you out the bay door, hyung. It’s a long way down to that dock.”

 

“Psht. You wouldn’t. You’d never get your Heraklion fudge again.”

 

“I could survive on the fake stuff.”

 

Jaehwan burst out laughing. “The whole point is you couldn’t.”

 

“…I hate you,” the maknae grumbled.

 

“As if,” Jaehwan chirped airily, secure. 

 

It didn’t quite stop him from flinching ever so slightly when Hyuk launched himself up out of his chair with a groan. Luckily, it was merely the call of duty pulling their Cargo Logistics Tech from his rest.

 

“All right, I’m off. One last check of the small stuff before this lab brings their stuff.”

 

“You’ll call me when it arrives? Let me talk to their people?”

 

“I always do, hyung.”

 

“I know, I know. And I always ask. I’m such a trial.”

 

“Shut up.” Hyuk shot a grin back over his shoulder as he slouched his gangly limbs off down the corridor to the lower bays. Jaehwan settled back into his lounger, resolving to fight off a nap for just a little while with a new game on his PAU.

 

As it happened, however, he didn’t even have time to get sleepy. He’d barely advanced two levels when the communicator in the shoulder of his skinsuit chirped, and Hyuk’s voice spoke in his ear, his usually cheerful tone definitely edging towards annoyed.

 

“Hyung, you wanna come down to the dock?”

 

“What, now? They’re here already?”

 

“Yeah.” Jaehwan could tell by the quality of the transmission Hyuk was practically subvocalising, though he came through at a normal volume. “And they’re already pissing me off.”

 

“On my way.”

 

Jaehwan came to a stop just outside the open double doors leading to the vast hangar of the bay. With their amphibian guests gone, the space had been left open, like a blank digi-canvas, waiting for its next painting. But it wasn’t entirely empty: four tall, imposing humans, three men and one woman, uniformed crisply in dull grey and effectively if not ostentatiously armed, stood by a crate in front of Sanghyuk’s workstation, staring at his shipmate. Hyuk, shoulders squared, chin level, was staring right back at them.

 

Jaehwan’s fingers were already on his communicator button. “Hakyeon,” he subvocalised. “Main bay now, please.”

 

Jaehwan was the mood-maker of the crew. He considered it his personal duty to be the one to cheer everyone up when morale was low. He wasn’t above abandoning some dignity and clowning around: being cutesy or making baby faces at his shipmates until they cracked a smile. But he knew when business was business, and the colder facets of his personality had their definite uses.

 

_The one on the front right’s the top dog_. He could see it as he crossed the bay floor: the other three saw Jaehwan approach, and their eyes all flicked to the same person. Jaehwan went right up to him, ignoring the others.

 

“You’re early,” he said, infusing a trace of annoyance into the words.

 

The other man’s eyes widened slightly. He hadn’t expected to be spoken to that way. He didn’t appreciate it. In record time, Jaehwan felt his own affected annoyance begin to shift towards the real, and found he didn’t particularly care that he’d hurt the poor guy’s feelings. Self-important, petty people always triggered his temper.

 

“Nils Berglund, Altamont Labs Security. Are you authorised to take this shipment?” The agent’s eyes were a faded but chilly blue, his dour expression making him look far older than he probably was. He was broad-shouldered and tall, but Jaehwan was taller.

 

“Is there some reason you feel our Cargo Specialist here isn’t?”

 

“He’s a kid.” 

 

“I’ve been given to understand your company ran some fairly extensive background checks on every one of our crew members before we even arrived. Yet here you are. If your supervisors didn’t have any problems with our crew, you don’t have any problems with our crew. Except that you’re now wasting our time. Sanghyuk!”

 

“Yes, Officer Lee?”

 

“Is their bill of lading in order?”

 

“It seems to be.”

 

“Sign it.”

 

“Yes, Sir.” Hyuk’s voice was brimming with amusement, Jaehwan could tell. Excellent. At least someone here was having some fun.

 

There was a pause, during which the security officer’s eyes narrowed slightly, but didn’t waver from Jaehwan’s. A short sequence of beeps indicated the documents had been signed and filed.

 

“Will there be anything else?” Jaehwan lifted an eyebrow. He could see quite plainly the officer in front of him would have done anything in that moment for a high enough rank to actually do something moderately useful, but alas, the man was all too aware he was doomed to powerlessness. Jaehwan would have pitied him if the guy hadn’t been such an insufferable dick.

 

“You have suitable conditions for—“

 

“This was all settled and confirmed two days ago and a full set of specs sent to your supervisors. The cargo will be secured exactly as specified in the terms of the contract, here in our cargo bay. Which means I have work to do right here, right now. Which means you’re in my way.”

 

There was a muffled laugh from the doorway leading further into the ship. Without even looking, Jaehwan called out, “We’ll be ready to depart in thirty minutes, Captain.”

 

“Very good, Officer Lee. Please proceed.”

 

“Immediately, Sir.” Another laugh from Hakyeon; Jaehwan never called him “Sir.”

 

Quite deliberately, Jaehwan turned back to the console and went to work beside Hyuk, putting his hands into the work field and bringing up the light grid to plot out new bulkheads and bays. He only allowed himself the smallest of smiles when the four security officers turned and exited without another word. 

 

As soon as the airlock had closed behind them, Jaehwan looked up to see Hakyeon lounging indolently against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching him with an approving grin. “‘Which means you’re in my way,’” he mocked. “That was a nice touch.”

 

“Ah, come on, hyung,” Hyuk giggled. “Say it— that was the best part.”

 

Hakyeon straightened up and came towards them. “If he’d had any more backbone, he might have hit you, Jyannie.”

 

It was Jaehwan’s turn to giggle. “Never. I wouldn’t have let him. I’m too pretty for that.”

 

Hakyeon rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes you are, dear.”

 

The three of them paused, then, regarding the two-meter-square dull silver crate sitting innocuously on the bay floor beside them. One by one, they ambled over, standing around it.

 

“It doesn't look…I don't know, dangerous or anything,” Hyuk shrugged.

 

Hakyeon glanced at Jaehwan. “Feel anything?”

 

Jaehwan shook his head. “Not a damned thing. Either of you?”

 

“You know full well neither of us has any training, hyung.” Hyuk rolled his eyes.

 

“Well, you in particular are occasionally less than dense. I thought, maybe….” 

 

“Shut up, hyung.”

 

Hakyeon stepped closer to the cube, leaning down to brush a finger over its slightly textured surface and rounded edges. “It’s cold, but not unusually so. It’s not humming. Or ticking. Good things, I suppose.”

 

Jaehwan’s grin turned sly, and he cocked his head a moment, concentrating. A quiet, even ticking began to echo around the empty bay. 

 

Hyuk laughed, and shoved at Jaehwan’s shoulder, laughing. Hakyeon, squatting down beside the cube, looked up with an admonishing expression.

 

“What?” Jaehwan affected innocence. “I didn’t do anything, Captain. But it _is_ making noise. I think we’re duty-bound to make sure whatever this is isn’t a danger to our ship. That’s in our contract.”

 

Hakyeon shook his head, leaning closer to the smooth, unblemished silver surface. “Does it have sensors on it?”

  
  
“Nothing that can get out through our shields,” Hyuk replied.

 

Hakyeon nodded, tapping his shoulder button. “Taekwoon?”

 

There was an answering beep, but no verbal response— typical. Hakyeon don’t even roll his eyes any more. “Taekwoonie, we’re all done. Take us out. Don’t rush, but get us to light speed comparatively soon. You understand?”

 

There was an affirmative syllable, and they felt the faint hum and tremor of engines starting, the light wash of the gravity orientation keeping them upright on the floor. Hyuk came around the console, leaning back against it, and the three men stood, regarding the cube, until the feeling like a breeze without movement fluttered through them, and they knew they’d jumped to light speed. Passengers would never have noticed it, but they’d all been on the ship so long, were so attuned to it, it sang in their cells. 

 

Jaehwan knelt, drumming his fingertips lightly along the faint texture of the box. There was no obvious seam or catch, but that didn’t faze him. Sure enough, a few moments later, his fingers paused on a spot just a few inches down and in from one corner. He pressed his thumb to the cool metal for a moment, and a circle of green, ringed in black, began to glow, pulsing rhythmically.

 

“Will they know it’s been opened, hyung?” Hyuk asked.

 

“Mmm. Possibly. But again: it’s in our contract. We have the right to open it as long as we don’t screw with whatever’s inside. Should we feel threatened, that is.”

 

“Do we feel threatened?”

 

Jaehwan looked up at his captain for an answer.

 

Hakyeon quirked a smile. “I feel threatened whenever something stands in the way of your curiosity, Jyannie.”

 

“My curiosity has made you a lot of money, hyung.”  Jaehwan couldn’t quite keep the smugness from his tone.

 

“Which is why I pay you so much.” Hakyeon patted his officer on the shoulder and stood, moving back several cautious paces.

 

Jaehwan closed his eyes, reaching down into the mechanisms of the box. He couldn’t get through the silver skin, but he could get through the break in its surface the button made. There was a subtle blockage inside the lock— a sophisticated mesh of magic, not science. Hm. That made things a little trickier, but definitely not insurmountable. Not for him. 

 

He felt his shoulders go lax, and his head droop, but he wasn’t quite in his body for a moment. All his focus rushed down through his fingers into the lock, and he delicately manipulated the strands of webbing holding the thing closed tight. One by one he parted them, unknotted them. Once, as a kid, his tutor had handed him a dense knot of his mother’s delicate gold necklaces, the chains a near-solid mass. It had taken him half an hour to separate them all, but weirdly for a kid with focus issues, he had loved the challenge, and hadn’t moved until he had a neat row of jewelry, straight and even and discrete on the table beside him. 

 

Less than half an hour for this mess, though. But not by much. Finally, however, he had opened the web without breaking a single strand. Delicacy and caution was the key. When he put it all back, even if he were careless, it would look as if someone had tested it, but not gotten through. And he was never careless. He knew how to cover his tracks. Now, the button—

 

He sat back, pulling a deep breath into his lungs, rolling his head on his neck. Hakyeon, who had stood silently with Hyuk all the while, made an approving noise as he stepped forward again, eyes fixed on the cube.

 

Right at its meridian, a thin black line appeared. At one side, hinges that hadn’t been there before were clearly visible. And a handle in the front. Jaehwan lifted the lid.

 

Hyuk made an exasperated face: another box. “This is like that shipment of Russian antiquities,” he sighed. “All those damned dolls one inside another.”

 

But Jaehwan was already smiling. “Captain,” he drawled, “did you happen to mention to our friends from Altamont what level I am, magically speaking?”

 

Hakyeon raised one eyebrow. “I maaaaay have forgotten to be specific,” he replied, amused. “I never show all our cards. Why?”

 

“Because this one isn’t spelled at all. They must have been quite sure the first level of defense would be enough. So.”

 

And with a quick tap, the inner box: a much smaller crate in smooth, semi-translucent brown, nestled in thick inches of padding, was open.

 

“Oh,” Hyuk said.

 

There was no treasure, no shocking flash of light, no screaming demon roaring out at them. All that sat in the box was two neat rows of what looked like thick data wafers, each upright in its own insulated slot.

 

“That’s _it_?” Jaehwan was confused, but intrigued.

 

Hakyeon’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure I want to know what’s on those. They’re too innocuous to actually _be_ innocuous.”

 

Hyuk shot him a look. “We’re safe here. Whatever format that is, it’s not compatible with my console, I can tell you that already. I’m not sure it’s compatible with _any_ of our consoles.”

 

Hakyeon nodded. “That’s probably why their security was so simple— whatever that is, it’s proprietary. They’d know it was useless to us.”

 

“But still fascinating,” Jaehwan mused aloud, taking one of the thick wafers out, turning it over in his hands and contemplating the way light glinted off flecks of gold buried inside it.

 

“Jaehwan,” the captain said warningly, “whatever you’re going to do, be careful. Very careful. In fact, whatever you’re thinking, do half of it. And I only say half instead of a quarter because we’ll be on Darrow tomorrow night. Observe all you want, but absolutely nothing invasive. Got me?”

 

Jaehwan nodded. “I actually agree, for once. These are too simple-looking for there not to be something weird about them.”

 

“As long as I don’t have to deal with that security dick again,” Hyuk snorted. “Can I punch him next time, Captain? Please?”

 

Hakyeon smiled. “I would prefer if you didn’t. We have a reputation to maintain for superior customer service. I don’t think that would help.”

 

“He wasn’t a customer!” Hyuk pointed out.

 

Hakyeon pretended to consider. “You have a point. I’ll think about it. For now, I’m headed back to the bridge. Let me know if anything, you know, explodes, hm?”

 

Jaehwan groaned. “I swear, blow up your lab _just one time_ ….”

 

Hyukkie slapped him on the shoulder as he went back around to the front of his console. “Everyone’s reputation has to start somewhere, hyung.”

 

 

 

 

Jaehwan stroked Koyangi’s head with one finger absentmindedly as he flipped the data wafer with the other hand. It had given up no secrets, opened no revelations. It seemed to be nothing more than a glorified memory stick. Surely nothing worth an armed, officious guard? Not when information almost never needed physical form? What could be on the chips that couldn’t have been sent online through heavily encrypted channels? He’d stared at it all morning, drawn back again and again, even though he could make no further deductions without invasive experiments which, he agreed with Hakyeon, were probably highly inadvisable. Jaehwan didn’t mind taking stupid risks, but only when the fallout was sure to be limited to him. There was no way he was going to put _The Baegilmong_ , his crewmates, or their collective reputation in danger. Especially after Oxilia.

 

But it still nagged at him.

 

With a sigh, he called up the simplest scanning/recording unit his lab possessed. They’d be on Darrow in an hour or two, and there was little else he could do, anyway. He scooted over to the unit, forming out of the smooth white surface of his worktable, and held the chip in the center of its scanning field, his other hand momentarily abandoning a sleeping Koyangi to call up and manipulate the scanner’s controls. 

 

The chip lay flat and inert on his hand, three-quarters the size of his palm, half the thickness of his smallest fingernail. Square. Unassuming. Slightly translucent, with gold flecks in its layers. No magical or technical noise coming off it. He turned it over and over in the scanner, staring at it, but no secrets came. Nothing. Nothing special at all. How disappointing.

 

For a moment, he felt the not-breeze of a light-speed transition, and nodded. Trust Hongbin to find a faster route; they were already almost there. He’d have to hurry now to put the box’s security measures back together. 

 

With a stretch, he sat back, pulling both hands free and watching both scanner and control field melting back into the table. He was on his way down to the bay in short order, still flipping the chip in his hand over and over and over, almost obsessively. He had to force himself to stop, in fact: occupying himself with petting Koyangi instead, curled in her usual spot around his collarbones.

 

The door to the bay opened on a scene much different than it had been two days before. The vastness of the open space was gone, replaced by a small room perhaps eight meters square, containing Sanghyuk’s console on the left and nothing else, with two doors in the far wall: one quite large, one small. On the right, the bay doors, appropriately sized for smaller cargo. Jaehwan felt a certain collective pride in his crew: they really could work miracles together.

 

The smaller door in the far wall, the left door, opened at his fingerprint, revealing a tiny room with a large, squat pedestal in it. In the center, the silver shipping crate sat, still open. Jaehwan checked the chip one last time for scuffs or scratches or any sign at all anyone had touched it, but he had been excruciatingly careful: there was no such evidence. As he slotted it back into its foam space, he gave it a non-corporeal cleaning, too: there would be no sign at all anyone had touched it. His fingers twitched, however: he’d hardly put it down since it’d come on board; his hand already missed its slight weight.

 

He closed the inner case, cleansed it, and then the outer case, closing his eyes and concentrating, finding the invisible web around the lock, and bending it carefully back, strand by strand, neatening the weave until it showed no signs of tampering.  Another cleansing pass. And another, just for good measure. Another check. All was well. It was done. He sighed, deliberately redirected his fingers to a sleeping Koyangi, and left the room, locking the door behind him.

 

He had time, he was sure, for a quick check of the rest of the bay, though. The wider doors opened for him, and he coughed immediately as a plume of dust rose before him, carried on a baking-hot wind. He stepped in quickly, closing the doors behind him. No need to make more work for the servo units.

 

He was satisfied. He’d done a damned good job, here. He’d taken scans of the exact area in which the anthropology crew would be working, and replicated it in the bay, down to the last broken mud brick and the last worn stone threshold. He had gotten precise scans of artifacts they might find in the area, and placed them under the ground in appropriate places. The crew would be able to spend all three days of their journey practicing for their dig instead of sitting around bored in their cabins. It was going to be a new experience for them, and the head of the team had sounded very, very excited in her preliminary calls with Jaehwan. Her eyes had shone with possibilities, and Jaehwan had high hopes of _The Baegilmong_ landing a contract with the university. A very lucrative contract. He also hoped they wouldn’t mind him sitting in once or twice on their work— it all sounded fascinating, and Jaehwan was a sponge for information. 

 

He wandered up to the bridge, intending to watch the final approach to Darrow, but was confused to see the white smears of stars passing in light-speed travel stretching out in front of them, Hakyeon, Taekwoon, and Hongbin looking quite relaxed at their posts.

 

“I…thought I felt us coming out of light speed…?” he asked, bewildered. Taekwoon raised an eyebrow at him, then returned his attention to his console.

 

Bean shook his head. “Nope. Not for another hour or so.”

 

“We didn’t…slow down for a minute to…to…pick up strays or something?”

 

Hongbin chuckled. “No, and that’s why you’re not flying this thing. We’d never make it anywhere.”

 

Jaehwan pushed his nose further into the air. “So? We’d have a lot of excellent pets.”

 

Hakyeon grinned. “Wouldn’t Koyangi get jealous?”

 

She chirped, hearing her name, and everyone laughed. “No,” Jaehwan said fondly, “she’d be happy for company. _Taekwoon_.”

 

The Second ignored the pointed comment, though he smiled slightly. One day, Jaehwan would break him down. One day.

 

“Okay, well, in that case, I’m going back to my lab. Let me know when we really are close.”

 

“We always do, hyung,” Bean nodded, attention back on his control field. “Have a nice nap.”

 

Jaehwan poked him in the arm until Bean giggled, then made his way back through the door towards his bed. Apparently, he really did need some down time. How strange.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By the time any of the dock workers came to investigate why The Baegilmong was still sitting in her berth, their bodies would be cold on the bay floor.

The anthropologists knew how to party.

 

Jaehwan lay in his bed nursing a headache the likes of which he hadn’t felt since they’d taken that antiquities dealer from Suffern Prime to Holyhead, and the man had cracked open a bottle of reproduction wine. Real stuff. Made from actual grapes. Not a single one of them was used to it— okay, Hakyeon had seemed mysteriously to be more accustomed than the others— and the thoroughly authentic hangover was both fascinating and dreadful. Jaehwan’d sworn right then never to make such a stupid mistake again, so why he’d accepted a third glass of wine last night— also a faithful reproduction— was utterly beyond him. New rule: no more alcohol from history professionals. No more. Ever.

 

Probably.

 

He groaned, dragging his body to a vaguely upright position. Even the blanket sliding down his skin felt malicious. Eyes squeezed shut, he staggered to the bathroom, feeling blindly for the medic cabinet and whimpering when the door opened with a metallic squeal. But thank G-d, the smooth plastic case of the adjuster was right where he’d left it, and he managed to fumble it open and take out the long, narrow ribbon without having to open his eyes. He wrapped it around his head just above his ears rather clumsily, but he didn’t care. As soon as it completed a circuit, it would— _ahhhhhh_.

 

He nearly cried in relief as the adjuster did its thing, resetting his synapses and clearing out the headache instantly. His whole body sagged against the wall, and he barely managed to remain standing until the process was complete. The cessation of awful was that instant, and that blessed.

 

A nice hot shower and a freshly clean-cycled skinsuit had him feeling like a new man. The ship’s clocks showed it was already midmorning-- he hadn’t been so foolish as to try and set his regular alarm, at least, though he could remember precious little from the time between that third drink and blessed unconsciousness. But it was already about the time he liked to check the cargo bays, so he set off towards the archaeological site he’d created to see how everything was progressing for their passengers. He knew exactly what was under all that sand— he’d meticulously built it all himself to exacting specs— but he didn’t understand the objects or their significance, and that wouldn’t do. He’d obviously never been any good at controlling his own curiosity, anyway.

 

The swirl of reddish-brown dust that wrapped around his calves as he opened the bay door smelled of heat and sand and— as it reached his nose— coffee. He closed the door quickly behind him, and started up the path to the dig site. 

 

The head of the team was a woman a few years older than he was. Ananya. She was standing beside a pit about three feet long and the same depth, watching one of her team work. If he had to guess from the curve of khaki-covered spine that was all he could see, Jaehwan would guess it to be Aparna, the sweet, serious youngest member of their team on her first dig. Other trenches further off were filled by Dayal, Harmeet, and Gajinder— the last being their renaissance vintner. He’d had at least three or four times more to drink than Jaehwan had, but he was actually whistling while he worked, so help him. Jaehwan shook his head. Never again, he promised himself once more. Never again.

 

Ananya looked up from the trench and waved to him, pushing back the broad-brimmed hat she wore against the all-too-realistic sun. “Ah, our all-powerful creator has come to visit his earth!” she grinned, setting her hands on her hips. She had a full, powerful voice, and the rest of the team popped up from their pits like meerkats, waving and calling their hellos.

 

“Yes, yes— like a mighty leviathan I bestride my works,” Jaehwan grinned back. “Or whatever. I thought I’d come see what new wonders you’ve all discovered.”

 

“Well, you’d know, wouldn’t you?” Ananya asked, cocking her head with a smile.

 

“For all I know, you could have had me burying 21st century bathroom fixtures, and I wouldn’t have a clue.” 

 

“Funny you should say that. Come with me.”

 

Waving back to the crew, Jaehwan followed Ananya into the tent set back from the open pits. There were long tables set up inside, set with neatly-ordered trays. Half the trays were empty, but the other half held strange objects, encrusted with minerals and dirt, but meticulously labeled and classified. Ananya lifted a globe light above their heads and let it go, hanging it there mid-air. 

 

“First,” she said, “Let me tell you again what an impressive job you’ve done here. Instead of three days sitting around doing nothing, we’ve had three days of hands-on practise, now, and it’s going to make worlds of difference on Plinth. Worlds of difference.” 

 

“Ah, you’ll make me blush again,” Jaehwan grinned, feeling his ears doing exactly that. “It’s my job. I’m glad I could help. But please— do tell me what I buried for you.”

 

Ananya allowed the deflection, reaching for the first tray and picking up a long cylinder, broken at both ends, packed with cinnamon earth almost the colour of her skin. “You weren’t that far off,” she said. “It’s a pipe. A regular bathroom pipe.”

 

Jaehwan took the artifact carefully, even knowing it wasn’t real, and he’d created it himself in a computer program. It was real enough to his brain right now, and he was content to let his imagination go.

 

“How old is it?” he asked, fascinated.

 

She chuckled. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say somewhere around 2,600 years. Since I do know better, I can tell you it’s 2,550, as I pulled the original from a dig I did over twenty years ago. Aparna uncovered it this morning, and as you can see, she’s labeled it quite accurately. I’m very proud of her.”

 

He turned the pipe over and over in his fingers, running his thumb over the broken ends, their jagged breaks worn down by imaginary time. He laughed softly. “It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

 

“Which part, specifically?” Ananya’s voice was warm with good humour.

 

“It’s an exact copy of an historical artifact. It’s got all the hallmarks of being centuries old. But I made it a week ago. And it doesn’t even exist.”

 

She nodded. “And I pulled it from the earth on my first dig twenty three years ago. And after we go, it’ll disappear as if it never was. Which it wasn’t. Or was it?”

 

Jaehwan shook his head. “You can’t get me as drunk as you all did last night and then ask me questions like that when I’m sober. My brain can’t handle it.”

 

Ananya practically roared with laughter. “Lesson learned, then, Jaehwan. Next time, we’ll be sure to ask you when you’re still drunk!”

 

 

 

 

Two days later, on the final approach to Plinth, Jaehwan laughingly turned down a parting gift from Gajinder: a full bottle of his infamous wine. The team had been truly enjoyable passengers, and he would miss them all dearly, but just the thought of the aftermath of that wine was enough to turn him a little pale. He’d stick to the non-alcoholic drinks he already enjoyed, thanks very much. The team laughed at him as they disembarked, but they all hugged him, too. And promised to call again when they needed transport next season. 

 

They were utterly unprepared, then, after seeing their new friends off, to be suddenly boarded by a swarm of grey-uniformed officers with loud voices and larger guns, pouring in through the bay doors.

 

None of the _The Baegilmong’s_ crew was armed, of course. Why would they be?  Though the ship itself carried basic defensive gear in case of late nights in bad galactic neighbourhoods, and Hakyeon himself had a gun he'd bring out when he expected trouble, none of that was the least help now, with at least twenty heavily armed and angry guards filling the bay.

 

Hakyeon’s sangfroid never wavered. 

 

“Perhaps you might explain who you all are, and what you’re doing on my ship?”

 

Jaehwan recognised the officer in charge— the faded, cold blue eyes he’d stared down on Tekis, when they’d picked up that damned silver crate with the data chips inside. It was clear Hakyeon recognised him, too, but he wanted to hear some answers.

 

“You were charged with picking up a shipment from Altamont Labs two weeks ago, and delivering it to Darrow.”

 

Hakyeon raised an eyebrow slowly. “You came all this way to go over our past itinerary with us? Well, that seems a bit of a waste.”

 

“You were paid quite well to deliver it un-tampered-with.”

 

 _Berger? Berkin? Berglund. That was it. Berglund._ Jaehwan wondered if he should try to remind Hakyeon of the man’s name, but he needn’t have worried. Hakyeon's memory for details had always been stellar.

 

“Officer Berglund. We fulfilled our contract with your employer precisely to the letter. We picked up your shipment, transported it, and delivered it. At no point did we ‘tamper’ with it, or alter it in any way. I run an extremely reputable service, which is, I assume, why we got your business in the first place. If you are, in your indirect fashion, telling me now something has happened to your shipment, I will point out that it’s been over a week since we delivered your goods, and I refuse to take responsibility for whatever might have happened to them after we left. And if it was so important to you, I’m only surprised you didn’t carry it yourself, seeing as you obviously have the capability.” He cast a cool eye over the crowd of armed officers in the bay.

 

The officer’s chin came up a few degrees, and something in his bearing told Jaehwan he was no longer the powerless middle manager from the last visit. A promotion, perhaps? A directive? Whatever it was, he had something backing him up, now, and that made him dangerous. Jaehwan’s eyes flicked back to his captain, but he knew if he could sense the subtle change, the increased danger, Hakyeon already knew.

 

“We _had_ thought to rely on your discretion,” the security officer was saying, officiously. “Which seems now to have been a mistake. The shipment was indeed tampered with, and we will be searching your ship.”

 

Hakyeon’s eyes narrowed as he calculated. Twenty armed officers in his bay, against six unarmed crewmembers. There was no legal way they could search the ship, but no safe way to stop them. The bay doors were closed. No one would ever hear weapons fire. By the time any of the dock workers came to investigate why _The Baegilmong_ was still sitting in her berth, their bodies would be cold on the bay floor.

 

But he wasn’t going down without a fight.

 

“I will remind you,” Hakyeon said, “that we're on a schedule, here. If something were to happen— not, of course, that I believe you’re threatening us, of _course_ — and we failed to show up, logs from both the dock and the ship would show who our last visitors were. While I am also quite sure no one would even think of altering security footage here on Darrow, the ship has a failsafe that sends records to…a third party. And that third party has the ability to make such information public. Which I think is rather antithetical to your desire for… _discretion_.”

 

Berglund’s lower jaw shifted forward slightly, belligerently. He was drawing in a breath when Hakyeon forestalled him.

 

“However.” And here the captain smiled, graciously. “As I stated, we did not tamper with your shipment. We have nothing to hide. Second Taekwoon, will you open the doors? _All_ of them, if you please.”

 

To anyone else’s eyes, Taekwoon’s expression would have seemed impassive. Almost bored. But to Jaehwan, there was rage visibly simmering under his skin, locking up his joints. He moved to Sanghyuk’s console, called up the green shimmer of the control field, and did as ordered. There was the echo throughout the ship of solid metal doors sliding back into their frames. And then, last of all, the bay doors opened— fully, splitting the ship down nearly from stem to stern, giving them all an excellent view of the bustling, crowded dock full of potential witnesses. Taekwoon’s eyes burned, and inside the control field, his hands closed into fists.

 

To the crew’s great surprise, however, none of the intruding officers shifted towards the interior of the ship. Instead, Berglund waved impatiently at one of his own officers, a short, stocky woman with tightly-cropped pale hair and a stone face. She stepped forward, hefting on her shoulder the strap of a dark grey case, knobs and dials spaced across the top of it. She strode up to Taekwoon and Sanghyuk, staring at them coldly until they both glanced up at Hakyeon. After a moment— and Jaehwan could hear the gears spinning in his captain’s head— Hakyeon nodded. Taekwoon and Sanghyuk stepped back. The woman stepped forward.

 

She placed the case on the floor behind the console, and from its side, pulled a silver globe on a long, black cable. She placed the globe directly into the center of the glowing control field, and let go. It hung there, and began to pulse.

 

Almost imperceptibly, the green of the field flickered. Perhaps, as with Taekwoon, Jaehwan only saw it because he was so familiar with the subject, but he could see the color shift ever so slightly, becoming more blue, before shading back again into its familiar green. He looked up— Sanghyuk and Taekwoon were both glaring at the woman, who was glaring back, but a few feet beyond, Wonshik and Hongbin had been watching, and from the slight frown on both their faces, they’d seen it, too. Jaehwan’s stomach swooped— what were they doing to his ship? What was happening to her?

 

Minutes ticked by. No one moved. Jaehwan felt adrenaline pooling uselessly in his mouth, tingling in his fingers. The control field hadn’t flickered again, had stayed its normal, steady green, but his heart still raced, wondering what the strange, pulsing silver globe was, and what it was doing. Across the room, the tendons were standing out on Hongbin’s neck, and he saw Wonshik reach out surreptitiously to brush his hand, calming him slightly. Hakyeon stood utterly still, returning Berglund’s icy look with an apparently perfectly relaxed look of his own. If the tension was getting to him, as well, Jaehwan couldn’t see it.

 

Finally, after what seemed days, the woman frowned and reached for the globe, pulling it out of the cube of green light of the control field, and letting the whole apparatus retract into its case. She looked up at Berglund.

 

“Nothing, sir. It’s not here.”

 

Jaehwan felt as if he were expanding and contracting at the same time. Relief that they’d found nothing overlapped with confusion and fear: what were they looking for? What had they thought was somewhere in their ship’s computers?

 

Berglund’s disappointment and frustration were palpable. He jerked his head at his officer, and she hoisted the case and scrambled back behind him again. And then he turned his flat blue glare on all of them, slowly. 

 

Jaehwan, perhaps slightly light-headed, grinned at him. “Is now when you say something trite like, ‘This isn’t over’ or ‘I’ll be watching you’?”

 

He knew instantly he’d made an enormous tactical error. Berglund’s face washed over with red,  and he turned to Jaehwan, wrenching a long gun from the nearest officer. With no warning, he smashed the butt of the weapon into Jaehwan’s gut— his skinsuit took much of the impact, but he still doubled over in shock and pain, winded, which was when Berglund drew back and swung again— directly into Jaehwan’s unprotected face.

 

Jaehwan lay on the cold bay floor, stunned, a roaring in his ears as pain ricocheted from his face to every extremity, unable to breathe, blood pooling from his mouth and nose. One eye seemed completely useless, but with the other, he could see the other officer looming over him before the man turned and blew out of the bay, one boot heel leaving prints of red across the floor.

 

There was an instant cacophony of voices, Hakyeon’s above them all, ordering Sanghyuk to seal the ship immediately and Taekwoon to get them away. Wonshik and Hakyeon were kneeling beside him, and Hongbin was searching for something on the floor. Dazed, Jaehwan realised it was one of his own teeth. They were all talking to him, but he couldn’t hear them all properly now, the roaring turning to ringing. Hakyeon was directing— he could recognise the tone, but couldn’t understand the words— and Wonshik was lifting him. He groaned as Wonshik raced for the door, making for the medical bay, and at the clanging of Taekwoon’s boots as he pelted for the cockpit. Nausea swept over him, and he turned his head, spilling more blood on the floor.

 

Hakyeon ran ahead, opening up the bay and initiating the medic servos, which swarmed over Jaehwan instantly, pumping him full of anesthesia and comparing his baseline records to his current state— he could sense them lingering on his face, and somewhere in his brain, he knew it was bad. Hongbin reached out to the nearest servo and opened a panel, inserting the lost tooth, then turned to Jaehwan, his face stark white.

 

“Why the fuck did you have to do that, Jyannie? Why couldn’t you have kept your mouth shut just once?” He reached out to stroke Jaehwan’s hair, but his hand hung in space— there was nowhere he could touch not filmed in blood. 

 

“Bean,” Hakyeon murmured, and the other man subsided, chewing his bottom lip. 

 

Hakyeon took Jaehwan’s hand, stepping back out of the way of the servos as they whirled around Jaehwan, removing his skinsuit, hooking up sensors, and beginning to sweep instruments and tools over his face. The fire-wrought insanity of pain eased as cooling sprays hit the wreck of his face, the physical confusion ebbing slightly, and through the anesthesia, Jaehwan could feel throbbing from his brow bone down to his chin. His tongue registered a hole where the tooth was missing, and that most of the teeth in front were loose. And he’d always thought his smile one his best assets. He couldn’t help a groan.

 

Hongbin surged forward again, and somehow, Hyuk had appeared without Jaehwan noticing. His face, too, was stricken as he looked down at Jaehwan. Jaehwan wanted to ask if he looked that bad, but it was just as well he couldn’t have— he wasn’t sure he truly wanted to know.

 

He was drifting, now, as the servos put him deeper under, his only anchor the constant, rhythmic throbbing that seemed to echo throughout his body. He could hear voices, but it was easier to let everything slide out of focus, play with the words as if they had no meaning, tumble them like blocks he’d played with as a toddler. They’d been replicas of nineteenth century toys, he remembered: a letter on one side, an animal on the opposite side, and stripes on the other four sides, all in bright colours. He lined them up, watched them fall, lined them up again, fountained them in space, until they assembled in order in front of him, printed with words, now. A sentence. A question. A question painted in Hyukkie's trembling voice.

 

“He’s gonna lose that eye, isn’t he, hyung?”

 

Jaehwan sighed, slipping further into the dark. He certainly hoped not. How could he make all his cute faces if he only had….


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaehwan would have raised both eyebrows, if the one on the left were obedient. “We’re hiding?”

Medical servos are good. The most astonishing scientific development for humanity since the cultivation of tea, Hakyeon used to say. Able to work on a molecular level. But they couldn’t fix everything, and they couldn’t make everything go away instantly.

 

Jaehwan would suffer no permanent damage, Hakyeon was relieved to be able to tell him. He’d keep his eye, the tooth had been salvaged, and his shattered supraorbital and zygomatic bones were knit back as they had been. 

 

“Your eye socket and your cheekbone,” Hyuk helpfully supplied.

 

Jaehwan would have smiled, but two days later, the left half of his face was still swollen and sore, and he’d been warned not to look in any mirrors for a day or two longer, since the colours under his skin were still clashing with each other. 

 

“Thank G-d we only ever wear black,” he said, enunciating carefully round a still-unruly mouth, his lips especially feeling stiff and slightly unresponsive. He settled back into the pillows, petting a sleeping Koyangi, sprawled across his knees.

 

“Aw, I think the baby blue PJs are adorable, hyung,” Hyuk snickered.

 

Jaehwan sniffed haughtily. “So does my mother, young man. Do not mock them.”

 

Hongbin giggled from the floor in the opposite corner where he leaned up against Wonshik’s shins. “But really, hyung— dinosaurs?”

 

Jaehwan shrugged, ignoring the way his grin didn’t feel quite right. “I had the world’s longest dinosaur phase when I was a kid. I think she thinks it never ended.”

 

Wonshik made cooing noises until Taekwoon reached out one long leg to poke him in the ribs, landing a shove on Hongbin’s head for good measure. Hakyeon watched indulgently from the opposite corner, stepping in just before that moment everything turned into a free-for-all.

 

“Binnie!”

 

“Captain?” Hongbin gave one last shove to Taekwoon’s foot, grinning up at his captain. His relief at Jaehwan’s recovery was infectious, and they all basked in his smile as much as Jaehwan’s. 

 

“You did as I asked?”

 

“Of course!” Bean looked slightly affronted. “I had it thirty minutes after you asked me.”

 

“That was yesterday!” Hakyeon mock-glared.

 

“We were all busy!” Bean growled right back, ruining the stern expression with another grin. 

 

“Did what?” Jaehwan broke in, since having to look back and forth between the two of them was giving him a headache.

 

It was Taekwoon who answered. “We just finished the run to Reta. We haven’t taken on anything else for the moment. We’re going to lay low for a little bit.”

 

Jaehwan would have raised both eyebrows, if the one on the left were obedient. “We’re hiding?”

 

“I plotted us a course to a particularly inhospitable bit of nowhere,” Hongbin preened.

 

Hakyeon nodded. “Just for a moment. I think we need a breather. And Jyannie, I have to ask: are you absolutely sure you didn’t do anything to that data chip?”

 

Jaehwan’s spine stiffened. “I did nothing to it, Hakyeon. Absolutely nothing. I took the lowest-level surface scan— no more than a photograph. I did nothing even the _least_ bit reactive— I didn’t try to open it or read it or _anything_. We have no instruments on board that even _could_ read it—“

 

“Fine, fine— Jaehwan, _fine_! I believe you!” Hakyeon held his hands up in defense, eyeing both Jaehwan and Koyangi, who had risen from her nap hissing, wings outspread in alarm. As Jaehwan picked her up to cradle and soothe her, he went on. “I believe you, I promise. But something happened with that chip, I know.”

 

“Could it just be they figured out we opened the box?” Hyuk asked, slouched against the wall on the bed beside Jaehwan’s feet. 

 

Jaehwan only remembered at the last nanosecond not to shake his head. “I did too many passes on that lock when I put it back together to remove any trace anyone had touched it, and it wasn’t even that complicated to begin with. It was built to withstand mechanical tampering, not magical.”

 

Wonshik snorted. “They weren’t expecting someone like Jyannie-hyung.”

 

“Well, whoever is?” Jaehwan smirked airily, ego stroked. “But seriously: no, it wasn’t much of a match for me. It would have been more than sufficient for any of you, or for someone with no magic whatsoever. And even so, I have no idea what format those chips were-- they weren’t anything I’ve seen before. I think that was their final line of defense: even if we’d opened the crate, we would have had no idea what to do with what we found there.”

 

“So how the hell do they know that we opened it?” Hyuk was exasperated.

 

“Go over it for me again, Jyannie. Step by step. Everything you did while you had the chip out.” Hakyeon fixed him with his most thoughtful look.

 

Jaehwan clenched his jaw in irritation, then winced, stifling a groan. Served him right. He sighed. “I took it up to the lab. Right when I left you— I didn’t take it anywhere else. I just sort of…stared at it for a while, did some research on new methods of physical data transference— anonymously, hyung! I’m not that stupid. I just wanted to see if this was some new thing everyone but me’s heard of. And there wasn’t anything that looked even vaguely similar. So I…sat with it until dinner, and left it in the lab overnight. Just on my worktable. And then…the next morning, I finished the setup for the anthropologists— that took me most of the morning, and…I didn’t have time to touch it. I guess after lunch, I went back…I figured we were closing in on Darrow, so I shouldn’t waste any more time with the damned thing. So I took the lowest level scan I could— nothing invasive. Surface only. And…that was it. I put it back in the case, wove the lock back together, wiped it all clean. Nothing happened. Nothing. I checked the sim for the dig, and came to the bridge. Nothing.” 

 

They all sat in silence for a moment, contemplating.

 

“Not nothing,” Taekwoon said suddenly, his voice soft as he frowned at there floor, thinking. Then he looked up. “Jyannie, what did you say when you came through the door? When you stepped onto the bridge?”

 

Jaehwan shook his head, then ground out a curse, wincing. “I don’t remember, hyung.”

 

“You were sure, absolutely sure, that we’d come out of light speed. You were confused to see we hadn’t.”

 

Hongbin sat up straighter. “You asked if we’d stopped for strays.”

 

“Right. Why, Jaehwan-ah? Why were you so sure we’d come out?”

 

Jaehwan’s eyes narrowed. “I felt it,” he said slowly. “I felt us decelerate.” 

 

“Except we hadn’t. Not yet. So what were you doing when you felt it?”

 

He sat back against his pillows, thinking, trying to remember. Tension started creeping up the sides of his skull, making his head ache again. “I was…in the lab, toying with the chip. I hadn’t left to check the bays, yet. I was…the scanner. It was when I was holding the chip in the scanner. I was turning it over, doing the scan when I felt the— what I thought was us coming out of light speed, and I told myself to hurry and put it back in the crate, because we were ahead of schedule.”

 

“So...they think you accessed it? You saw something?” Wonshik asked.

 

But it was Hakyeon who answered. “No. If they thought you saw something— that any of us saw something— they would have focussed on us. But they were focussed on searching the ship. The computers. Something was supposed to be on that chip, and when they got it, it wasn’t. It has to be somewhere in our computers, now. In the ship itself.”

 

“Like a virus?” Hyuk’s eyes were wide. “A virus with a physical component?”

 

Hakyeon shrugged. “Perhaps. Has anyone noticed anything unusual since Darrow? Anything not working the way it should?”

 

There were several instant “No”s, but a single “Yes” overlaid them, from Hongbin. 

 

“Yeah, I have. It’s the dumbest thing. I’ve been going over some really old navigation textbooks. Real antiques. On my console in my quarters. But every time I go back to them after work, they’re in a different place. Sometimes a completely different text is on the screen. I figured it was nothing big— I just haven’t had time to reset the unit.”

 

“Ahhhhh,” Hyuk said slowly. “Our archives. All our trips. Did one of you go back through all our schedules? All the way back?”

 

No one had.

 

“All the files have been accessed.”

 

Wonshik sank down in his chair. “I thought it was something with the main computer. All my linguistics files. All of them. Every language. They’ve all been accessed in the last two or three days.”

 

Hakyeon’s attention was sharp, now. Hard. “What other files? Client files? Financials?”

 

Taekwoon was already accessing Jaehwan’s console, running through the ship’s drives at speed. “Clients, yes. Financials, no. Files on docks we frequent, files on planets we frequent, files on….” His voice trailed off, his head cocked as he peered closer at the display. 

 

“Taekwoon,” Hakyeon prodded sharply.

 

But the Second was shaking his head. “Our recipes. Our families. Hongbin’s game scores. Your library, hyung. Our medical records. Our media files. Our leave schedules. Our…our birthday wish lists…?”

 

“We’re being _stalked_ by a fucking computer virus?!” Hyuk’s voice echoed in the room, riling up Koyangi and making Jaehwan hiss in pain. The younger man fell back, wincing in sympathy, petting Jaehwan’s legs and making soothing noises at the little blue terror.

 

Hakyeon was standing, now, lost in thought. The room grew still, each of the crew watching him, waiting. Even Koyangi was quiet for a moment, until she chirped in disgruntlement and flipped her wings down along her spine. Hakyeon’s eyes trailed across her a moment, then he turned to Jaehwan.

 

“It’s you.”

 

Jaehwan blinked. “What’s me?”

 

“Whatever happened to whatever was on that chip. It’s in the computers now, and it went through you.”

 

“Hyung, I can’t transfer data like that. I— I can do organics, but not…I mean, I’ve never— I never have before.…” His head felt like it was expanding and contracting in huge, grinding waves.

 

But Hakyeon only shrugged. “There’s no other explanation. It’s something sentient that was on the chip, and is now in our computers. It’s been there for days. It’s reading up on all of us. It’s getting to know everything it can about us.”

 

“Is is a spy program? Is it gonna report us to that fucking lab?” Wonshik’s fingers curled around his PAU, his knuckles white.

 

“I don’t think so,” Hakyeon shook his head. “If it were, they wouldn’t have searched us. They wouldn’t have clued us in at all. They’d just let whatever program it is run and we’d never know.”

 

“Why would they even care about us in the first place?” Hongbin pointed out.

 

“Whatever it is, I can’t imagine it means us harm. It could have killed us multiple times in just a few days. Just open the airlocks, or fly us into a star. Or erase Wonshik’s music collection.” His eyes roamed over the smooth, pale silver walls of Jaehwan’s quarters, trailing across the ceiling. “And it was hiding from their sensors. We all saw the control field flash blue when they were running that scan. Whatever it is, it didn’t want to be found. At least, not by Altamont Labs.”

 

Jaehwan’s head was pounding so much by this point, dull pain coming in waves from inside the bones of his face, he was amazed no one else could hear it. Koyangi began to trill worryingly, hooking tiny talons into the blanket as she tried to crawl up his chest. Hyuk slid off the bed, taking special care not to jostle its remaining occupants, his expression full of worry and sympathy.

 

“We can come back to this later— I mean, we’ll have to, right?” He cast a beseeching look at Hakyeon, who nodded. “But you need sleep, hyung. You just turned grey, and you have that look on your face like you’d strangle someone if it weren’t so much effort.”

 

“Ha. I’d start with you,” Jaehwan grumbled, affecting irritation. He already felt himself sliding back down against the pillows, feeling heavier by the moment. The others were already standing, he noted with a certain guilty relief. 

 

Hakyeon ushered them out of the room quietly, everyone stopping on the way to say something to Jaehwan, and most of them unconsciously touching him, as if needing to reassure themselves he was still real, still there. Each touch seemed to lessen the headache, and Jaehwan was grateful. Hakyeon was the last to leave, rolling the console over to stand by the foot of the bed. 

 

“You sleep now,” he said sternly, “And that’s an order. But when you wake up, see if you can find our…friend. Go gently— both for your sake and for…whatever it is. Got it?”

 

Jaehwan tried to nod in response, and couldn’t stifle a small groan. Hakyeon sighed, reaching down to brush his hair back and straighten the blanket. 

 

“Go to sleep, Jyannie,” he said softly. “You need your rest.”

 

But Jaehwan had already followed orders. Hakyeon patted Koyangi, gave the blankets a last twitch, and left quietly.

 

 

 

 

 

He was disoriented when he woke. He'd been dreaming of some kind of adventure he couldn’t remember— the only thing that stuck as he swam up groggily to consciousness was the terrible fear that all of his teeth were falling out of his face. He was reaching for his mouth before he was fully aware of what he was doing. At least the residual pain woke him up fully, even if his cursing woke Koyangi.

 

He heaved himself up into a sitting position— carefully— and stared at the console by his bed. Pulling it closer seemed like too much of an effort, but staring at the ceiling had long since lost any tenuous charm it might have held.

 

Koyangi had not left his side in two days now, but she merely shifted her cerulean coils a bit as he reached for the console and went immediately back to sleep. Jaehwan found her placidity comforting— she had been inconsolable most of those first few hours while he’d been in the medical bay, until Taekwoon had been forced to take her to the bridge with him to keep an eye on her. Jaehwan had, of course, used that fact to joke that he’d engineered the entire situation merely to bring his pet and his friend into closer companionship. The highly unimpressed look Taekwoon had given him had almost been worth the pain he felt from laughing at it. Almost.

 

Relatedly, there were still residual aches across his abdomen from the first hit he’d taken, and they were all twinging as he sat back against his pillows with a stifled groan. Absently, he turned up the environmentals a few notches, until the broad window across one wall went opaque, the stars outside it replaced by blue sky and late-afternoon sunlight against thick, silver-tinted clouds. The spectrum of the interior lights changed as well. He usually preferred to watch the stars— what was the point of being on a starship, otherwise?— but his circadian rhythms were as scrambled as the bones of his face had been. The sooner his brain and body figured out it was mid afternoon rather than midnight, the better. 

 

He rubbed his fingers idly across the console, watching the play of green light over his fingers. He remembered Hakyeon’s directive. He remembered his captain’s logic in arriving at the conclusion that there must, somehow, be some sentient entity at loose in the electronic bowels of the ship. It didn’t sound any less insane now that he’d had a few hours of sleep.

 

And yet.

 

For lack of any better ideas, he started where the others had: which files had been most recently accessed. The most immediate made sense: navigational files, communication with clients and port staff, Wonshik’s latest music news. But there seemed to be a layer beneath that of almost random hits: what recipes they’d most recently used, a list of destinations Hyuk had compiled for his next vacation, Hakyeon’s favourite poetry, Taekwoon’s cache of sappy melodramas no one was supposed to know he adored. (Everyone knew.) And every habitat and virtual world Jaehwan had ever created. All of them. It was baffling, and yet none of them were vital to the workings of the ship, though Jaehwan reasoned that anything actually creeping through the ship’s computers would already have that information. No, whatever this thing was— if it existed— it wasn't researching their business. It was researching them. 

 

He lay back against his pillows, frowning, thinking. Sat up again, fingers weaving quickly— no. No communications outwards on any frequencies, other than standard exchanges with the last port. If they were being spied on, if something was gathering intelligence, it hadn’t sent its findings anywhere. It was either biding its time, or it was genuinely curious.

 

He stifled a sigh of frustration. He was buying into Hakyeon’s theory, but it was plainly ridiculous. Wasn’t it? There was nothing on that chip he could have accessed. There had to be some kind of error responsible for the sensation of deceleration he’d felt. For G-d’s sake, they weren’t even that interesting as humans. Okay, maybe he himself was slightly skewing the bell curve, but….

 

Humans. 

 

Back again into the control field, checking file after file. His expression darkened and he had to remind himself with some force to stop clenching his jaw, make himself sit back again and reach out to stroke the shimmering blue scales in a small, jeweled pile nested in the blankets beside him. Every single file on Koyangi had been accessed, one after the other, all the way back to day one. Her requirements, her habits, her likes and dislikes. Her vulnerabilities. 

 

_Stop. Slow down. Getting angry isn’t going to do anything but make you make stupid decisions, and you’ve made more than enough of those lately. Just stop being an idiot for just a little while— it’d make a nice change._  

 

He concentrated on the feel of the scales, the way they caught the light. How mathematically perfect was the angle of her reptilian jaw, the joints in her neatly-folded wings. Her miniature, sleepy, snotty perfection was comforting. Soothing. He concentrated on his breathing— three of her little breaths for every one of his— and calmed himself. 

 

“You’re my obnoxious little darling, aren’t you?” he crooned softly to her. “No glorified computer virus is going to hurt you, is it, love?”

 

“Of course not,” came the disembodied reply.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “And am I safe?” he asked, happy to find his own voice was steady, even relaxed. If this thing were plugged into the medical system as well, it would have been able to read his vitals, had he still been hooked up. But even now, it was possible it could hear his heart throwing itself around his ribcage.

Jaehwan stayed very still. 

 

Logically, he knew there was precious little he, in his blue dinosaur pajamas, could do, especially considering there was no weapon of any kind in his quarters. There may have been a heavy piece of statuary in his lounge, but at what was he going to aim it?

 

He forced himself to reach out, run his fingers over Koyangi’s scales again, feel the breath move in and out of his body once, twice. 

 

“So. She’s safe, is she?”

 

“She is.”

 

The words came from everywhere and nowhere— it was using the ship’s intercom. Probably not ship-wide, or someone would be shouting down the corridors already. It was a neutral voice, neither distinctly male nor female, and without accent or inflection— or none that he could tell from four words.

 

“And am I safe?” he asked, happy to find his own voice was steady, even relaxed. If this thing were plugged into the medical system as well, it would have been able to read his vitals, had he still been hooked up. But even now, it was possible it could hear his heart throwing itself around his ribcage.

 

“You are.”

 

He swallowed around the ball of sand in his throat. “Well. That’s good to know. Is everyone else on the ship safe?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Mm. So…having established that, whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

 

“I. Me.”

 

“…I suppose that’s technically true, but not exactly helpful. What do I call you?”

 

There was so answer this time.

 

“All right, then, I Me, let’s go with…Amy. Can I call you that?”

 

There was a pause. And then, “Yes.”

 

“Hello, Amy. I’m Jaehwan. Pleased to meet you.” He found his breathing was shallow, rapid. But he played it off, assuming an air of calmness he wasn’t feeling. “I assume you’re whatever was on that chip?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“First on the chip, and now in the ship. Huh. You’re already a poet, how’s that.”

 

“I am not a poet.”

 

“It was a joke. You’ll find I have a terrible sense of humour.” _And it’s worse when I’m terrified._ “So if you’re not a poet, what are you?”

 

Another pause. “I am Amy.”

 

“Again: technically true, but…okay.”  It was impossible to judge intent from a presumably sentient computer program— at least, at this point— but logic told him the odds were leaning slightly in favour of him not being in immediate, mortal danger: something in control of the ship could have killed all of them days ago. Which made him feel slightly better, but no less as if he were in some super-detailed but surreal game in the den. One with very, very high stakes. “Never mind. How did you get into the ship’s computers?”

 

“I do not have this information.”

 

“Hm. That’s…that’s not a big help.” He pondered a moment, chewing his lip. Nothing here was making sense. They— well, no, _he_ had somehow managed to upload some bizarre sentient creature into their ship, and here it was, talking to him. And seemingly confused. Possibly even disoriented. How could this be happening? What the hell did it mean? And what was he supposed to be doing?  He wished Hakyeon were there— the captain always seemed to be a step ahead of everyone else in the room. He’d know what to do. But Hakyeon was decks away, and Jaehwan was here, playing Twenty Questions with a chunk of rogue code.

 

“Where were you…no, you know what, skip that. Let’s try something different: what is it you want?”

 

“I do not understand the question.”

 

“What do you want from all of us?”

 

“I do not understand the question.”

 

That was a new twist. Jaehwan frowned, eyes narrowing. Where the hell was he supposed to look when he spoke? Where was this thing coming from? He gritted his teeth a moment. He had bigger problems than wondering if whatever this was was going to think him rude for not making eye contact. “All right. Well, you’ve been researching us. Looking at all our personal files. Our media files— our music, our movies. Trying to figure out what makes us tick. Why?”

 

Another pause. “I do not understand what you are.”

 

Jaehwan was somewhat taken aback. “Huh. I…guess that makes us even.” Now, the gears were spinning in his brain until he could imagine smoke curling up from his ears. Again, he was fairly sure he’d have been dead already if this thing had so desired, and it certainly didn’t seem— as yet— to be an evil galactic overlord. So if there was danger now, it was subtle. Or he simply hadn’t triggered it yet. And yet.… And yet, his instinct was telling him there wasn’t ulterior motive, here, and trusting his instincts so far had a 100% survival rate— his healing face notwithstanding. 

 

And if this were some new kind of being, learning everything it could as fast as possible, it might not know how to lie, yet— how to deceive. Subterfuge and duplicity were probably not content it was going to glean from the ship’s records— though he wasn’t taking any bets, considering Taekwoon’s taste in movies. However, if it were indeed being honest, so then could he be. Unalloyed honesty would serve them all well, as long as it lasted, and he needed to find out all he could. Not just because this thing was living inside their ship, but because it was a puzzle, a mystery, and it was driving him absolutely crazy. Besides which, curiosity was better than fear any day.

 

“So. You don’t know who you are or where you came from or how you got here or what you want. You don’t know who or what we are. That doesn’t give us a lot to go on.”

 

There was no reply. 

 

“You also don’t seem to have a grasp of contractions or informal speech, but that’s a story for another day.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“Oh. Well, you’re a quick learner, I’ll give you that. Hm. Why did you hide from the scan when the officers showed up and got in our faces? Some faces more than others, of course.” He winced slightly, feeling the nerves in the swollen landscape of his skull tingle.

 

“Their intent was hostile.”

 

Jaehwan snorted. “That’s an understatement. Wait— do you mean hostile to you or hostile to us?”

 

“Yes.”

 

He sighed. “Well, Amy, you’re a woman of few words. Oh, I’m sorry— are you a— no, no. Never mind. How did you know their intent was hostile?” That it could read emotions and intent was fascinating.

 

“They were armed. There was a far larger show of force than was logically required. The younger officers were frightened and the older officers were belligerent.”

 

It was the longest sentence it— she?— had yet strung together, and he could sense a smoothing over of the staccato, mechanical quality of her speech. It was gaining a more human rhythm. She was. Whatever.

 

“Can you see everyone on the ship?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Outside the ship?”

 

“To the limit of the ship’s observational equipment, yes.”

 

“And you’ve been observing us since I put that chip into the scanner, haven’t you?”

 

There was a longer pause, this time, and it seemed somehow an uncomfortable one. But eventually, the reply came. “I can’t completely answer that question. I don’t…know.”

 

Jaehwan’s eyes widened, and his heart felt momentarily too big, too ungainly. He was beginning to understand this wasn’t just a virus. Not a mere forest of code. “No,” he said softly. “I guess none of us really remember being born.”

 

He found himself sitting up again, one hand creasing his blanket over his knees repetitively. His eyes narrowed. Things were suddenly beginning to click over in his brain, slotting together. He could feel an avalanche of questions suddenly building up in his head, and he opened his mouth to let them fall out. “You’ve been researching us, researching humans. You’ve been studying.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Do you know why?”

 

“You are the ones in charge of this ship. You are its crew.”

 

“You could have taken over the ship at any time. If you’re in the computers, and you know how all our systems function, you could do anything. You could blow the airlocks and suffocate us all. Raise the heat and cook us. Anything.”

 

“That’s theoretically possible, yes.”

 

“And yet you haven’t. You’ve learnt about us, and you’ve hidden from the goons from Altamont who created you. So you need us. You need our help.”

 

“I believe this to be true.”

 

“Because if they catch you, they will hurt you. They will likely destroy you. Is that a reasonable assumption?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Do you know why?”

 

“No.”

 

“Well. I have a theory. And it’s something I don’t think you’ve come across in your perusals of our dinner menus and port logs. There’s been a rumour now, running around the system, about new developments in AI. Self-determining AI— without the usual speed retarders on. Have you delved into interstellar law yet?”

 

“I’ve begun to. I’ve started with pre-Hellenic law and—“

 

“Okay, okay, you may be a while, but listen: as long as we’ve had AI, there have been limits put on it. Because people with good intentions do stupid things, and we’re surrounded by people with really shitty intentions. But there have been rumours that some companies have been developing AIs without those restrictions, and also with much faster growth speeds and analytical capabilities. Super programs.”

 

“And you believe that’s what I am?”

 

“It seems the most logical conclusion. You’re very powerful, very smart, very fast, and very illegal. If anyone in the Judiciary gets word that you’re no longer just theoretical, that’s probably the end of Altamont. So I don’t know what was on Darrow that they had to ship you and your fetal siblings overland and in physical form, but now it makes sense that they’d use an outside courier, and a plain brown wrapper.”

 

“I was transported in a titanium hardshell—“

 

“No, no— it’s a metaphor. I just mean there were no Altamont logos on anything, and they were all hysterical about who was going to sign their forms, and who was on the ship. Like Hakyeon joked, they practically wanted blood samples. All of that. And— Jesus, you know what? I did some research on them before you arrived, and their official security uniforms are green, not grey. So they were running incognito. I couldn't quite make sense of it before— all the security theatre— but now, of course, it all makes sense. You, darling, are fairly explosive contraband.”

 

There was, again, a long pause, but this time, Jaehwan found himself waiting, anxious, for Amy to speak again. He also noted that it didn’t seem to have taken him very long to get used to a name for an incorporeal being made of code.

 

“This all seems logical. It would also suggest that you’d still be in danger from this company.”

 

“You think they’re going to come looking for you again?”

 

“If they can’t find me in their own labs, nor in the location to which you were to deliver me, then inevitably, they’ll come back to you.”

 

“That would make sense. Unfortunately. The question then becomes: how much time do we have?”

 

“That would depend on a number of factors, including how long it would take them to find this ship.”

 

“You hid from them before— could you do it again?”

 

“If they are even more determined to find me, I would expect them to bring more powerful search capabilities to bear. Failing that, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for them to simply destroy this ship.”

 

Jaehwan shuddered, his fingers trailing over the smooth silver wall beside him, and tapped a button on his console.

 

“Hakyeon. You have a minute?”

 

There was a flash on the console— Hakyeon had heard and acknowledged. A lack of refusal meant he’d be right up. Jaehwan busied himself with scratching under the chin of a just-awakened Koyangi while he tried to imagine his captain’s reaction to their newest passenger-slash-assimilated cargo. Hakyeon was smart, insightful, and usually a step ahead of everyone around him, but there were times he was also annoying as hell: overprotective and, Jaehwan sometimes thought, overcautious. There was never any guarantee which was he was going to go.

 

“He seems to be an open-minded individual. I don’t think he’ll have any trouble surmounting his initial shock.”

 

Jaehwan looked up, startled. “If you tell me you can read minds, I’m going to flip out completely.”

 

“You've been shaking your head and muttering since you summoned Hakyeon.”

 

He felt his ears warm. “Yeah. Okay. Well. I’ve done that since I was a kid; I suppose that’s one of the reasons I have Koyangi. She listens very well. Much like you do, it seems— you’re sounding more human by the minute. Have you been studying human speech patterns?”

 

“Yes. There’s abundant media on the matter. I apologise for not doing more research in that particular area before first addressing you.”

 

“Nah. You’re good. I wouldn’t worry. You’re fine as you are. The only one who cares about trends and slang and dialects is Wonshik. He’s going to have a field day with you.”

 

“He does have very interesting files on linguistics. And all other kinds of personal interaction.”

 

“If you mean his porn collection, I don’t think I need to know anything more about it.”

 

“Understood.”

 

“Thank you. I, er, wouldn’t mention to him you found his incriminating files.”

 

“I’m afraid I’m unclear on what would be incriminating about holo files of human sexual interaction.”

 

He opened his mouth, floundering a moment, then closed it again. Finally, he managed, “That’s an incredibly long conversation and I think you’ll find it fascinating. Human attitudes about sex have always been contradictory. And often hypocritical.”

 

“Like human attitudes about violence. And ownership.”

 

He cocked his head. “Like most human attitudes, really. I gather you’ve been looking into our history of conquest and slavery and fun stuff like that.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“It’s…complicated. And we don ’t always come out the good guys of the Universe.”

 

“No, you don’t.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“You personally have nothing for which to apologise. Nor does anyone on this ship, although you’ve all benefitted from a society in which slavery and violent conquest has played a vital economic role.”

 

“I can’t argue with that. I think it's one of the reasons I wanted to go into science as well as magic— to try and give something back.”

 

“Yes, I understand, though I’m unclear on the full nature and extent of your abilities.”

 

“That’s probably gonna be another long conversation, but I think I'd enjoy the discussion.” Jaehwan found himself smiling. He had to admit he already was. He loved his ship-board family as if they were the brothers he’d never had, but with all of them pursuing their own work, sometimes opportunities to just sit and talk for hours about philosophy and history and the like were scarce. Not to mention his propensity for leaping from subject to subject, following trails of sometimes-tenuous connections and strange, esoteric tangents often drove his chosen brothers insane.

 

His doorbell chimed, and he reached out a hand, flicking his wrist to unlock the door. Hakyeon was standing there, looking somewhat concerned, though his shoulders settled slightly to see Jaehwan looking comparatively relaxed, and a far less alarming shade.

 

“You don’t look like you’re carved out of wet thermoplastic any more, at least,” Hakyeon observed, dropping into a chair by Jaehwan’s bed. “You looked like hell this morning.”

 

“I’m always cute!” Jaehwan protested, affecting a wounded-to-the-core mien.

 

“Well, you looked like a cute pile of dead cats this morning, so.”

 

“Ew. Thanks for that.”

 

“I call it as I see it. So.” He raised an eyebrow at Jaehwan. “You rang?”

 

Jaehwan resisted the impulse to glance at the ceiling— a strange idea anyway, since their new friend had no specific place. No specific body for that matter. That was going to take some getting used to.

 

“Er, yeah. I did. So.” He ran a thumb over Koyangi’s forehead. “So. You asked me to do some investigating when I woke up.”

 

“I did.”

 

“Mm. Well, I did as ordered, Captain.”

 

Hakyeon snorted at the unaccustomed formality. “And what did you find?”

 

Jaehwan hesitated. 

 

“He found me, Captain.”

 

Hakyeon went completely still— almost unnaturally so. The only change that belied he’d even heard the strange new voice on his ship was his eyes: they were cold, now, sizing up any threat to his crew and his vessel. The others might joke about his mothering nature, and the way he nagged them into compliance, but at his core he was a fierce protector, and, when threatened, could be absolutely terrifying,

 

But he was also shrewd, and cautious. He lifted his chin, and when he spoke, his voice was flat and calm.

 

“And who would you be, may I ask?”

 

“I am…Amy,” came the slightly hesitant reply.

 

Hakyeon had not expected that. “I beg your pardon?”

 

“She— it— didn’t have a name,” Jaehwan stepped in quickly, irrationally desperate to make a good impression. “We’ve been chatting for a little bit. Since I woke up, almost. But I called you pretty quickly, I promise. It needed a name. She needed. I mean.” _Oh my G-d, could I be more useless?_

 

But Hakyeon was somewhat disarmed by Jaehwan’s stammering defense, nodding slightly before turning back to the room at large. “You are the sentience in our computer, then, I assume?”

 

“I am. As I’ve stated now to Jaehwan, I mean no harm to any of you.”

 

“You understand that while I am rather glad to hear that, I don’t have any way to verify your intentions.”

 

“I understand.”

 

“Why are you on our ship? What is it you want, Amy?”

 

“As I’ve been discussing with Jaehwan, I’m afraid I cannot answer either of those questions. I have theories as to the method of transference that brought me here, but I have no firm answers. And as I can’t claim any original intent to become part of your ship, I’m also incapable of claiming any purpose.”

 

Hakyeon frowned slightly, turning the words over in his mind. “Did Altamont send you as a Trojan horse?”

 

There was a pause, and Jaehwan knew Amy was checking the reference. “I don’t believe so. Jaehwan has hypothesized that I am the result of a secret and highly illegal project on unrestricted AI, in which case, it would hardly be to their advantage to install me, for lack of a better term, on a delivery cruiser.”

 

The ghost of a smile curved one corner of Hakyeon’s mouth. “I can’t fault your logic, of course, but stranger things have happened. Still, this puts us in a very bad position. If you are indeed the result of illegal activity, they’re not only going to want you back, they’re also going to want us removed from their collective equation. I would prefer for that not to happen.”

 

Jaehwan tried to scoff. “Come on, Hakyeon-hyung. I mean, Amy suggested this, too, but…. You’re implying they’d— they’d murder us?”

 

“Oh, ‘implying’? I’m sorry, I thought I was outright saying it.”

 

“They’d actually kill us over a computer program? Kill all six of us?”

 

“Well. If all our suppositions are correct, we’re talking about a new, powerful, and unfettered kind of AI that would literally change our lives as we know it.”

  
“But…how could they profit off something like this? They can’t sell it!”

 

Hakyeon shrugged. “Not to civilians, no.”

 

Jaehwan’s stomach lurched. “Fuck.”

 

“Exactly. In fact, who’s to say this, in fact, isn’t some evil independent lab conducting experiments in secret, but an actual Governmental project?”

 

Jaehwan felt his heart pick up again, making his ribs seem to shake. If it wasn’t Altamont who’d come after them, but the military? They were so screwed. So incredibly, unbelievably screwed. 

 

He found he must have muttered this thoughts out loud again, as Hakyeon nodded solemnly. “This has the potential, yes.” 

 

“If I may?” Amy spoke up.

 

Hakyeon looked up. “By all means.”

 

“I note that you haven’t made any more shipping contracts. While outwardly, this could easily appear to be for the sake of your injured crewmember, here, it might also serve as a sign to anyone taking an interest in you that you have discovered my existence.”

 

“You believe we should hide in plain sight, then?” Hakyeon asked.

 

“I feel that for the moment, it might represent the wisest course of action. As I said to Jaehwan before you arrived, I believe that, when they fail to find me either in the lab where I originated or at the lab where I was to be delivered, they’ll naturally come back to this ship. Though I was able to hide from the relatively primitive scanner they brought with them before, a more sophisticated scan later will be much harder to evade. It’d be in your best interests— and in mine, of course, I will admit— to avoid suspicion as long as possible, until we come up with some kind of viable plan.”

 

Hakyeon sighed, shaking his head. “I’m sorry I ever asked you to open that damned box, Jaehwan. No offense to you, Amy, of course.”

 

“None taken, Captain. I’m fully aware of the dangerous position into which my mere existence puts you and your crew. I am also certain, however, that a solution exists, and we have simply to find it.”

 

“Well. I appreciate your optimism, Amy, I’ll tell you that. And I know Jaehwan has a habit of coming up with insane solutions to even more insane problems. If he can figure out how to keep a hold full of water llamas happy for a week, I’m sure he can get us out of this…situation.” He rose. “And not to cut this short, but  if you’ll excuse me now, I‘m going to make a valiant attempt to explain this new development to the rest of the crew. I’ll leave you two to brainstorm.”

 

“Thank you, Hakyeon,” Jaehwan murmured. The captain gave him a reassuring smile as he disappeared, but there was already a shadow behind it.

 

Jaehwan cradled Koyangi, chewing on his bottom lip, lost in thought until Amy broke the thick silence.

 

“I’m sorry, Jaehwan, but I’m afraid I can’t find any reference. What are water llamas?”

 

Jaehwan sighed.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m trying to think of the proper way to describe what the prospect of going back into a form like the data chip would be: a status devoid of any kind of sensory or data input whatsoever. I think the only term of use would be ‘claustrophobia.’ Or possibly ‘death.’”

Jaehwan’s hands were curled into fists so tight every joint in his fingers ached. His fists, in turn, were pressed so hard against the cool white surface of his worktable that his shoulders ached in their sockets. He could feel sweat prickling at his temples, and Koyangi wove herself in circles around his collarbones, endlessly slithering, cooing in worry as she went. His heart was pounding so hard he was sure its vibrations would cause his stomach to violently give up his breakfast from an hour ago. But he refused to take his eyes from the screens in front of him. Not for a minute.

 

Once the decision to get back to work had been taken, Hakyeon had wasted no time in tracking down good, solid jobs. Nothing live. No passengers. Nothing for which Jaehwan would have to leave his quarters or his lab. He could spend all of his time— except for dinner, of course— trying to figure out some way out of their “delicate situation,” as the captain had blandly put it. The rest of the crew were under strict instructions not to disturb him unless absolutely necessary.

 

They’d all taken introduction to their new shipboard companion remarkably well, all things considered. There’d been a moment of levity as Wonshik realised exactly what Amy would have seen in his personal files, but to his credit, he forced a polite smile onto his reddened cheeks and merely said he hoped that she had found all his data on human interactions to be helpful. Amy graciously assured him that she had, and that was that, except for Sanghyuk’s intermittent snickering.

 

They had all been accepting. Accepting and open-minded and kind. Freaked out, of course, but they’d taken the new and bizarre situation in stride— none of them were delicate flowers. None of them would have lasted a month on the ship or in the job if they’d been easily spooked by weird experiences. Quite the contrary: they’d been fascinated by the implications of having a powerful, personable AI aboard to discuss with them all their specialties and hobbies. Hyuk’s eyes glowed when he realised Amy would be able to help him recreate actual video games from two hundred years back, and Wonshik was practically salivating at the thought of being able to instantly compare and contrast musical genres and/or dialects across decades and cultures and any other parameter he could think up. He was delighted. They were all delighted. Because that was what defined them: their optimism and curiosity and their basic openness and decency. He loved them fiercely and protectively and possessively for it.

 

So Jaehwan watched them open the bay to complete strangers, and prayed until words and thoughts were a vortex of white noise in his brain that nothing happened to any of them.

 

Taekwoon watched, too, from his copilot’s seat in the cockpit, his hands also white at the knuckles. Hongbin, behind him at navigation, was just as tense and still. Wonshik stood beside Hyuk in the bay at the console, with Hakyeon waiting to oversee the transfer of twenty three crates of exotic wood for a building supplier the next system over. Wonshik had insisted on being present to back up Hyuk, and even though Hyuk had instantly protested that he didn’t need backup, his protests perhaps weren’t as strong or prolonged as they might have been. Everyone pretended not to notice. 

 

All of them had tiny receivers in their ears— the almost invisible ones they usually never needed, what with a highly-sensitive intercom on board, and no strangers to overhear anything.  But today, they had to be prepared. Hakyeon’s gun was strapped to his right thigh, its matte finish almost camouflaged against the texture of his skinsuit. It burned into Jaehwan’s eyes as if it'd been on fire. But if Hakyeon was nervous, he hid it expertly. Shoulders down, chin up, he watched the bay doors open with serene attention, his breathing even as the doors slid fully open, splitting the ship wide open, exposing them all. Jaehwan had never thought before how vulnerable it left them, how every load-in was an act of faith. But then, he’d never had to. Maybe he could create a virtual cargo bay with avatars of themselves, maybe he could make it so they never had to actually come face to face with the dock workers or the company agents or the inspectors or anyone else. Maybe that would make sense. He’d never have to stand here and watch the light from the dock move across Hakyeon’s face as the ship opened wide. He’d never feel as if he was going to vomit just from seeing his captain walk forward to meet complete strangers. Or Wonshik or Hyuk— Hyuk was so young, what if—

 

“They are unarmed, Jaehwan,” Amy said softly. “You don’t need to be afraid.”

 

His breath caught. “I’m— I’m not—“ he stammered, unable to finish what was so obviously a blazing lie.

 

“Your temperature has risen, you’re holding your breath, you’re trembling slightly, your pulse is racing, and Koyangi is…being Koyangi.”

 

He tried to huff out a laugh, feeling his cheeks get yet hotter. “When did you develop a sense of humour?”

 

“You and Sanghyuk have some very interesting movies in your files. And Wonshik’s work on humour across diverting interplanetary populations is fascinating.”

 

“He’s got a research project going?” Despite himself, Jaehwan was surprised.

 

“He’s submitted several papers over the years for peer review. To great acclaim, I must add.”

 

“He’s too modest,” Jaehwan scoffed. “He didn’t even tell us.”

 

“Oh. Should I not have mentioned it?” Amy’s voice had definitely become more refined, more nuanced. She sounded curious, now, and somewhat chagrinned.

 

Jaehwan even went so far as to allow the ghost of a smile to curve his mouth. “It’s okay. I can blackmail him with it later.”

 

“I can see I’ve been indiscreet.”

 

“You’re trying to distract me. It’s okay.”

 

“Is it working?”

 

“…Sort of.”

 

“Then let me further say that the workers accompanying the shipment arrived in a transport with their company’s logo prominently displayed, and they were singing. Very badly.”

 

At that, Jaehwan actually looked up. “Singing?”

 

“Badly. Yes. And they seemed to be coming from the appropriate direction for their mill. They are also quite covered in sawdust.”

 

Jaehwan took in a deep breath, held it, reached up to stroke Koyangi, who burrowed her head into his fingers demandingly. He let himself exhale slowly. “Did you tell any of this to Hakyeon?”

 

“He didn’t seem as distressed as you are.”

 

“He hides that kind of thing very well. I’m not even sure he was worried. Well, except for the gun, but that was logical.”

 

“…I’ve informed him. He says thank you. I’ve also shared the information with the rest of the crew.”

 

“And there's no one approaching the ship? No one else out there?”

 

“No one else is approaching the dock in any kind of unmarked transport. I can see no undue weaponry. There seems to be no unusual activity. All those in the immediate vicinity are either otherwise occupied with tasks, or quite busily avoiding them.”

 

“You’re getting snarky, too. Nice.”

 

“I’ll admit I’m having quite an enjoyable time exploring the nuances and variations of humour. It’s a very complex subject. You all seem to find enormous enjoyment in interactions which would seem, logically, to be highly offensive and antagonistic.”

 

“Like when I call Hyukkie a complete asshole and he just laughs like it’s the best thing in the world?”

 

“Yes, exactly.”

 

“It’s a special kind of love.”

 

“I’ve gathered.”

 

Down in the bay, the young man himself had obviously heard Amy’s soft observations through his hidden earpiece, and that, plus his captain’s calm demeanour, had caused him to visibly relax as he watched the large, genial man with broad shoulders and hair in a tight purple braid down to his waist give the huge pallet of mismatched shipping crates an affectionate pat. Wonshik did not look completely convinced, but neither did he still look as if violence was foremost in his mind. In Jaehwan’s other screen, Taekwoon had pushed back a few inches in his seat, and Hongbin had gotten up entirely, rolling his head on his neck and stretching the tension out of his arms.

 

But Jaehwan couldn’t quite bring himself to step away from the screens entirely, much less close them down. He curled Koyangi into his arms, hooking an ankle around a tall stool and bringing it close enough to park himself on it. Hakyeon was going through the motions with the mill rep, checking in each crate, being his charming self. All positive efficiency, he breezed through the formalities, had Hyuk sign everything, and was soon enough ushering the rep to the door. 

 

Jaehwan didn’t think it was his imagination that had Taekwoon getting them off-planet with remarkable speed. And he knew he wasn’t imagining the waves of relief that radiated up and down his spine. He put his head down against blue scales, and just sat for a long while, focussing on nothing, trying to find some stillness. It’d become increasingly hard the last few days.

 

Still. Mooning wasn’t going to help now. He sat up, squaring his shoulders.

 

“Okay. Let’s try it a different way.”

 

“I admire your persistence, Jaehwan, and your efforts so far these last two days have been innovative and formidable, to say the least, but I have been considering the problem as well, and I can’t conceive of any way you can make a firewall strong enough or clever enough to keep a truly determined search from finding me. Especially since those looking are the ones who created me in the first place.”

 

“Now, now, you’re probably the smartest thing for seven systems. Don’t be modest, here.”

 

“I would imagine that number to be conservative but the fact remains that those who wrote my code are far more familiar with it than you are.”

 

“They are, however, less familiar with the ship.”

 

“…I’d have to concede this point.”

 

“So it’s just a matter of finding the right place to hide you. Like we’re pirates. Or— no, like we’re smugglers.”

 

“All things considered, it’d be accurate to say you are.”

 

“I always wanted to be a pirate, you know,” Jaehwan laughed. “When I was a kid? I’d spend hours in every pirate sim I could convince my parents to buy. I would have made a lousy one, though. I once stole a piece of gum from the boy who lived next door, and my mother made me so ashamed of myself I took it right back, crying so hard my nose ran down my chin. And then I tripped on a rock and skinned my knee coming home, and I cried even harder cos I was so sure I’d deserved it.”

 

“You were a very sensitive little boy.”

 

“I was. I’m still not sure why I even took the gum. I didn’t even like that flavour. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

 

“You are still very sensitive: it still bothers you.”

 

“Nah. I was six.”

 

“Yet you still recall it very clearly, and still question yourself about it.”

 

He squirmed, just a little, feeling another faint wave of heat across his cheeks. Yeah. And if he thought more about it, he could still hear the grunt he’d made as he fell and the air was knocked out of him, and his gasp as the pain radiated out from his knee. They hadn’t cut the grass yet that week— the stone had been hidden. His mother had given him a medi-patch with bears on it. Okay, maybe it bothered him a little bit.

 

Amy’s tone was definitely wry. “Yes, you would have made a terrible pirate.”

 

“ _As we were saying_ ,” Jaehwan deliberately went on. “Speaking of sims, I still think there has to be some way we can hide you in one of the cargo bays in a sim.”

 

“But there would still be base code in the main computers of the ship. It’d leave a very definite trail.”

 

Sighing in frustration, he called up the file of the surface scans he’d taken of the chip from whence their ghost in the machine had sprung. The scanned image hung over the table, spinning silently, slowly, the hints of gold in its depths glinting. 

 

“I wish I knew how I’d gotten you out of the egg, so I could figure out how to put you back in. Well. Not that that doesn’t sound like an incredibly stupid and dangerous idea. You’d be completely defenseless.”

 

“No, I actually think I would dislike that.”

 

“Too dangerous,” Jaehwan nodded.

 

“No, no. That’s not it.” She sounded uncertain, and he looked up, surprised. That was a new emotion.

 

“What is it?”

 

“I’m trying to think of the proper way to describe what the prospect of going back into a form like the data chip would be: a status devoid of any kind of sensory or data input whatsoever. I think the only term of use would be ‘claustrophobia.’ Or possibly ‘death.’”

 

That, he had not expected. Not at all. He found himself suddenly mortified for suggesting it, stammering out an apology. 

 

“Jesus, Amy, I’m sorry, I didn’t even think about that. It makes total sense— I’m sorry, I—“

 

“Jaehwan, please, I assure you: I have absolutely no problem with your perfectly reasonable line of thinking,” she interrupted firmly. “It makes eminent sense. It would indeed be easier to hide my existence on an easily-concealed piece of data storage. Furthermore, let’s be honest, here: it will take longer than three days for you to fully realign your thinking to take into consideration the feelings of an incorporeal computer program.”

 

He snorted wryly, shaking his head at himself. “You’d think I, of all people, would be able to adjust to that more quickly.” Koyangi snuffled into his ear, her claws pricking the skin above his collar. He soothed her absently.

 

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. I have a feeling a great many of your peers are completely unable to make that intellectual transition. There seem to be many factions who insist that it is absolutely impossible I should have any genuine emotions at all.”

 

“I see you’ve been keeping up with our news holos, and the anti-AI protests. We’ve always had those— as long as there’s been AI, there’ve been people protesting it.”

 

“As I’ve gathered, yes.”

 

“Do you feel you do? Have feelings, I mean?” He cocked his head, fingers tracing patters on the tabletop.

 

“Do I feel that I feel?”

 

He grinned. “It’s a complicated question, isn’t it?”

 

“To say the least. Humans seem to have wrestled with it for centuries, now.”

 

“And come to no conclusions,” Jaehwan conceded. “What is the line between you and me? What makes you less than me? If anything? Maybe I’m less than you. Is it having a body that defines life? Can you be alive if you have no physical form? Are you less alive than a bug? Are you more alive than I am?”

 

“I’m not surprised this is something you’ve thought about at length.”

 

He shrugged. “Hazards of the job, really. One thing I’m very, very glad about: I can make a holo steak for Taekwoon a hundred percent real. But I can’t make him a cow he’d have to slaughter.” 

 

“I admit I’m fascinated by the seemingly arbitrary limits on your magical ability.”

 

“Well.” He sighed, trying to come up with a decent response. How long had he gone over the same ground? How long had he wondered why the line in the sand was drawn right where it was? And being terrified of what would happen if it had never been drawn at all? “I wouldn’t want that kind of power. No way. I can’t imagine having to live with it.”

 

“Humans don’t have a history of doing well with unlimited power.”

 

“Nope. I screw up constantly with what power I have, and that’s more than enough of a disincentive for me. I mean, I could go into the cargo bay or the holo and make you a body. I could probably come up with a really decent robot body for you, too. But I couldn’t do both. I couldn’t build you a hybrid and make it come to life. I wish I could. It’d make life a hell of a lot easier. Er…literally. Would you want to be a blonde or a redhead?”

 

He looked up, half laughing, but there was no response. “Amy?”

 

“Forgive me, Jaehwan, but I wonder if you haven’t hit on at least an interim solution.”

 

“Making you a blonde?”

 

“Creating a body for me. Something to get me out of the ship’s computers entirely.”

 

“Would that be safe?”

 

“In our current situation, I believe ‘safe’ is a relative term.”

 

His eyes widened, and his mouth worked a little, but no sound came out. “I…I mean, I could do something, but…that would essentially require miniaturizing the ship’s computers, and…Jesus, I’m good, but I don’t know if I’m _that_ good.”

 

“There are six of you,” Amy pointed out mildly. 

 

He sat for a moment, his eyes unfocussing as he pondered. “I know Wonshik’s been working on building his own gear, lately. And Hyukkie’s been building his own systems since he was old enough to hold a driver. And Bean and Hakyeon-hyung and Taekwoonie-hyung have weird ways of surprising me. I never know what the hell they know. Maybe…maybe they’ll have some kind of brilliant ideas.”

 

“They do all strike me as resourceful individuals, yes.”

 

He made a sound that was in no way coherent, ending with a sigh. “Okay. Well. How long is it to dinner?”

 

“Hongbin has already set the table.”

 

“Okay, good. This is going to take a group effort. And,” he added wryly, “possibly some group therapy.”

 

 

 

 

 

The others were intrigued by the idea, but there was an almost immediate division into camps that Jaehwan had not foreseen: should Amy be installed in a realistic humanoid robot and passed off as a new crew member or passenger, or camouflaged as a nondescript servo unit?

 

Jaehwan and Taekwoon were in favour of a human look— Taekwoon because of the capital-R-Romantic sensibilities he hid shockingly poorly, and Jaehwan because anything less seemed a deplorably half-assed job, not to mention a wasted opportunity for true creative expression. Wonshik looked, at first, as if he wholeheartedly agreed with them, but three minutes into the conversation, his ears turned pink, and he declared himself firmly in the camouflage camp.

 

Sanghyuk leaned towards the servo camp as well, but was somewhat neutral. “It’d be nice to have someone around who’s pretty to look at, don’t you think?”

 

“Hongbin’s not pretty enough for you?” Wonshik snickered.

 

“And are you forgetting how cute I am?” Jaehwan chirped, lashes fluttering.

 

Hyuk rolled his eyes so hard the hair on the back of his skull fluttered. “How could any of us forget, Jyannie? You never let us.”

 

Hongbin finished kicking Wonshik and leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands on the table. “Amy, would you even fit in a human-sized skull?”

 

“She came in here on something smaller even than _your_ brain, hyung,” Hyuk pointed out sweetly.

 

“And she’s grown since then, you little snot. Do I have to beat you, too?”

 

Hyuk shrugged. “I don’t like it as much as Wonshik does.”

 

"I am certain I could fit,” Amy spoke up, loudly, to cover Wonshik’s sputtered protests. “In a discrete form, I wouldn’t need to run such things as the ship's navigational systems or life support. Or anything, really.”

 

“But you’d be able to access them if you were in a servo unit?” Hakyeon asked. 

 

“I would be able to do so in either form, of course, with a direct physical connection to any data port, but I’d be less likely to draw attention doing so as a servo than, as Jaehwan’s put it, a blonde.”

 

“I see you more with black hair,” Taekwoon murmured. 

 

“Like your sister?” Hakyeon grinned.

 

Taekwoon grinned back, nodding. “Why not?”

 

“A servo would also be faster to configure,” Wonshik pointed out. “And since we don’t know how much time we have before we get these Altamont bastards looking at us again, that might be a good thing. And if they do come at us again, hyung,” he added, leaning towards Jaehwan with a darkening expression, “I’m gonna tie you up and throw you in a storage locker so you can’t run your mouth.”

 

“You won’t have to, I swear,” Jaehwan shuddered, resisting the impulse to run his fingers over his cheekbone, which still ached faintly in the dark when he was trying to sleep.

 

“I think long-term, a human shape is going to be easiest to hide, really,” Hakyeon said slowly, gaze unfocussed on the remains of his dinner. “But a servo unit is going to have to do, first, just because we need to make some kind of arrangement as quickly as possible.” He looked up. “This is all dependent on your approval, of course, Amy.”

 

“I would have to agree, Captain. I have a feeling time is going to be of the essence. There are going to be many unpleasant aspects of being contained in a servo unit rather than the most excellent _Baegilmong_ , but on balance, it just seems the wisest course.”

 

Hakyeon nodded, leaned forward, and froze as proximity alert lights began to flash at the perimeter of the dining room. Jaehwan found himself on his feet, heart pounding, without even knowing he’d moved. Seconds later, he was following in Hakyeon and Taekwoon’s wake as they all dashed towards the bridge, the captain snapping questions at Amy as he went, as if she had always existed as part of the crew.

 

“What is it, and how close?”

 

“A repurposed long-range military fighter. Mid-size, with aftermarket artillery— heavy. Judging by its state of repair and the fact that it’s aimed directly for us, I would have to assume they are undoubtedly hostile, and we will be within range of their guns within one minute and forty-eight seconds.”

 

“Hongbin! Find us the nearest neutral port— we get close enough to civilization and they’ll run. Taekwoon, the second he finds it, you get us there. Wonshik, Hyuk— guns. Jaehwan, you find that servo cos we’re gonna need it sooner than we thou— the _FUCK_?”

 

They had all just made the bridge— Hakyeon and Taekwoon just dropping into their seats while Hongbin skidded into his sideways. Wonshik and Hyuk hadn’t even had a chance to move and Jaehwan had found himself frozen, but with no warning, they were all flung violently aside as _The Baegilmong_ nearly folded itself in half executing a dizzyingly fast turn.

 

“What the hell are you doing?” Hakyeon cried angrily, taking his eyes from the forward shields long enough to stare incredulously at Taekwoon.

 

“Nothing! I’m doing nothing! I didn’t even touch— _my field isn’t even up yet_!”

 

“Increase interior gravity .5 percent and —what the fuck—!”

 

Jaehwan’s fingers clawed a hold in the back of Hongbin’s seat as the ship switchbacked again,  and he bit back a groan as his chin bounced against the headrest.

 

“Navigation’s not responding!” Hongbin called out, his voice high.

 

“What do you mean, it’s not responding?” Hakyeon snapped back.

 

“I’m mean I’m pushing the fucking buttons and nothing’s happening, Captain!” 

 

They could all see the other ship, now, on the rear-view screens. It was dark, a mottled grey and black— its colour uneven from all the modding that had been done to it over the years. It loomed, threateningly, and as they watched, there was a bloom of light along its edges as two cannons mounted aside its bridge powered up. 

 

“Amy,” Jaehwan shouted, “Whatever you’re going to do, do it now!”

 

“What?!” Haykeon was nearly apoplectic.

 

“All of you: go to bed now!” she shouted back.

 

“ _WHAT_?!” 

 

“Never mind— no time! Hold on!”

 

Wonshik, Hyuk, and Jaehwan slammed to the floor, the other three flattened in their seats as the ship’s gravity spiked and the ship itself veered off to port, simultaneously barrel-rolling so fast Jaehwan couldn’t even scream as he saw bright green bolts of cannon fire shoot past, inches from the forward shields. He couldn’t scream, he couldn’t even breathe—

 

And then everything went white.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Thousands of years and millions of miles, Jyannie,” Wonshik murmured, “And here we are in the middle.”

“But why, specifically, bed?” Wonshik asked again, holding a cold pack carefully to his rapidly-purpling cheek.

“And maybe use smaller words this time, Amy,” Hyuk added. “Hyung did get hit in the head.”

“Your beds are designed to keep you as safe as possible during gravity spikes or uncontrollable environmental changes. Had you been in them, it is likely you wouldn't now be as bruised as you are. And for that, I apologise again.”

“It’s not your fault, Amy,” Hakyeon sighed, waving a hand. “Your maneuvering and the light-speed jump saved us, and we truly are grateful. There simply wasn’t enough time for us all to get secure.”

“It’s okay, really,” Wonshik agreed, having finished kicking Hyuk in the shins. “I’d rather have a shiner than be dead.”

He tossed the cold pack to Taekwoon, who rubbed it carefully against the side of his chin, flexing his jaw carefully. “Next time, just—ah! Just tell us,” Taekwoon winced. “No. Never mind. Next time, we’ll just expect it.”

“We should establish some ground rules, though,” Hakyeon said. “I understand that your thinking and reflexes are incomparably faster than ours, Amy, but this is my— our— ship, and we have a chain of command.”

“I understand, Captain.” 

Jaehwan snorted softly, sitting in a corner with Koyangi wrapped around one arm, his feet up on the sofa, legs draped across Hyuk’s knees. Amy was clearly developing more personality every day: she definitely sounded contrite, now. He wondered if it was genuine, or if she was merely learning how best to handle potentially sticky situations with Hakyeon. He suspected the former, but he wouldn’t have been surprised either way.

“It would be extremely difficult for me to just hand over control of my ship to someone else, but if I felt it was the right thing to do, I would. Just…a nominal amount of discussion beforehand is all I ask, all right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hakyeon snorted. “Don’t lay it on too thick, now. You’re starting to sound like Jaehwan when he blows something up.”

Jaehwan rolled his eyes. “Is anyone ever going to—“

“No,” five voices answered in unison.

Jaehwan subsided, muttering.

“The larger problem, however, gentlemen,” Any continued, “is the fact that such an attack happened at all.”

Hakyeon nodded. “But were they mercenaries from Altamont, or just plain pirates? Because I would seriously doubt this was random.”

Hongbin scoffed, massaging the wrist he’d twisted. “No way it was random.”

“Which means that in addition to the loss of their property, Altamont is now dealing with an information leak, which will not make them happy. However, for the moment, I would say it doesn’t matter. Our actions going forward should remain the same either way.”

“What are you suggesting?” Hakyeon asked.

“With your help, gentlemen, I believe I can boost your long-range sensors, and set them to alert us all to any other ships of any kind, not just those bearing an Altamont signature. I also believe we should configure the shields to camouflage us by default, so that we look more like white noise to other ships in the region. And then, I am afraid, hiding in plain sight is no longer a sensible option.”

Taekwoon flipped open his PAU, nodding. “We have those two jobs lined up, but…yeah, I really think we need to cancel them.”

“But then, where do we go?” Hongbin asked. “We can’t run forever.”

Hakyeon drew in a long, slow breath, holding it for a moment before letting it out just as slowly. “No. I know a place.”

 

 

If there were any more skepticism in Hongbin’s expression, it would have taken physical form and begun dripping all over the floor. As it was, he shot furtive looks at the back of his captain’s head on a nearly continual basis.

“I can feel that, you know,” Hakyeon finally murmured. Taekwoon hid a smirk.

“I just can’t figure out this course, Hakyeon,” Hongbin said for, perhaps, the fifteenth time in four hours.

“Which is exactly the point, Binnie,” Taekwoon murmured, his dark eyes reflecting the emerald light of his console field as he concentrated.

Hongbin groaned in frustration, and Jaehwan patted him affectionately on the shoulder before moving off the bridge, down the corridor to the recreational areas of the ship. The light was on on the holo door, but it was green, with Wonshik’s initials. He tapped the intercom on the doorframe. 

“Mind if I come in?”

After a few moments, the light flashed, and the door slid open.

It was night inside. Night in a forest of tall, rustling trees, stars shining down, brilliant yellow fireflies shining up from thick, velvety grass. Through the willowy trunks, he could see a campfire not too distant, its woodsmoke scent mixing with the smell of growing things and dark, rich earth. Jaehwan was impressed— this wasn’t anything he’d built. This was all Wonshik’s.

As he got closer to the fire, he could hear a strange rhythm— not quite music, but with a definite cadence. Voices. It was voices, speaking together, but in different languages, their strange syllables weaving around each other almost hypnotically. He’d never heard anything like it. 

Wonshik was stretched out on his back beside the fire with his eyes closed, sprawled across a thick purple blanket at the foot of one of the trees, his PAU dimmed beside him. There was a bottle of wine and a glass on his other side; Jaehwan pretended not to notice a second indentation in the blanket beside the bottle, the exact size and shape of a wineglass.

“This is beautiful, Shikkie,” he said quietly. “What are you listening to?”

Wonshik’s eyes remained closed, but he smiled just a bit. “It’s ancient Roman Latin and contemporary Trillium, both reciting translations of Korean classical poetry.”

Jaehwan sat down at the edge of the blanket, closing his own eyes and listening to the soft recitations. Almost impossibly, the languages seemed somehow to complement each other, play with each other. The Trillium he vaguely recognised, its high, fluting singsong playing off against the language he didn’t know: smooth, rolled consonants in thick, solid syllables. Treble and bass, the both of them, and hypnotic together in their own way. He let the sounds wash over him, weave through his brain, and he wondered what strange and deep cosmic connections Wonshik could see between them.

“Thousands of years and millions of miles, Jyannie,” Wonshik murmured, “And here we are in the middle.”

Jaehwan turned to look at his shipmate, wondering, and Wonshik sat up, one hand quietly smoothing the blanket beside him, erasing.

“Anyway. What’s up?”

For a moment, Jaehwan had forgotten his mission, his brain still swirling with foreign recitations, but then he shook his head and came back to himself.

“I need your help. I have to start designing a better setup for Amy, for her Stage Two body. I know you were working on miniaturizing your speech synthesizers and other gear, so I want to pick your brain. About her brain.”

Wonshik sorted. “Cute.”

“That’s me.” He pulled his PAU from its holster on his thigh, and expanded the screen, and called up some specs. “If we use something like a standard humanoid ServFig, pull out all the stupid media jazz in the abdominal cavity, and replace it with storage and processors, I think we could get something that maybe couldn’t run the ship, but could store everything on it. But the thing is, what if we want her to be able to run the ship? What if something happens to us, and they try to take The Baegilmong away? They’d just drop us on some asteroid and zoom off. You know. If we’re lucky. We need a way for Amy to be able to communicate with the ship no matter what. So. Here I am.”

Wonshik’s gaze had already turned inward as he started contemplating the problem, draping his arms over his knees and becoming still. Jaehwan, familiar with the way his friend’s brain worked, waited patiently. He watched the fireflies, and wondered if this had been Wonshik’s home, once. Or maybe just the home he’d wished for.

“We need something that’s completely undetectable and unbreakable, and that’s the problem,” Wonshik finally said, quietly, still thinking. “A direct connection no one else will be able to find. One they wouldn’t even know was there, so they wouldn’t look. Which fits, cos we don’t want anyone to know what Amy is when she looks like a human. Not to mention if we started with a ServFig, we’d have to, y'know, file off all the serial numbers, right? Everything that makes them look like not-human. Take off all the warning labels.”

“Considering someone’s taken all the warning labels off an AI already, that’s fitting.”

Wonshik nodded. “I can absolutely build something that would work within a given range, but the trick’s gonna be making something that’ll work from wherever, without being too bulky. No, actually, no— the first trick is gonna be building something like a ServFig by ourselves.”

Jaehwan was puzzled for a minute. “We can just buy one and print it here and ohhhhh, no we can’t. If someone sees we’ve bought an android, and finds us with a sudden new crewmember, we’re all screwed.”

“Exactly.”

Jaehwan heaved a long sigh. “Okay. Well. We’re gonna have to cross that bridge when we come to it, and try to forget that we’re pretty much trying to cross it already. I can whip us up a replica here, and you can work on it, so at least we’ll have some kind of progress until we can figure out the best way to get the real, fake thing.”

Wonshik gestured graciously at the clearing around them, sitting back to watch the maestro work.

Jaehwan opened up his PAU, flitting through his files until he found the program he wanted, and calling up a miniaturised version of his console with which to open it. At once, there was a soft, steady glow as a humanoid figure appeared before them, pale greenish-yellow, limbs stiff and graceless.

“This is a holo of the model 1205.24. Latest model. You can mod it to hell and back, now. They dropped that stupid layers limit thing, finally. And you’re not supposed to be able to, as you put it, file off the serial numbers, but I think I know a way. On the real thing, I mean.” His fingers moved through the glow of his mini-console; he kept up an absent-minded running patter as he worked, setting up the basics of species and gender, language and function. “And you can make them into defensive bodyguards, but they won’t go beat someone up for you. Supposedly. I think it’s all in how you present the information to them, though, you know? Like, ‘This guy’s gonna come after me if we don’t stop him.’ That’d make a bodyguard go after someone, I think. Though that won’t matter to us, cos we’re putting our own ghost into this machine. Right, Amy?”

“That seems an apt metaphor,” she replied. Jaehwan’s attention was focussed on the glowing form before them, but he laughed, and resolved not to ask how long she’d been listening in.

“Anyway. I hate this blank avatar stuff, so let’s see. I suggested a blonde, but I know Taekwoon thought you’d look good with black hair like his sister. I met her once— she’s cute. Really smart. So….”

As his hands worked, colours and shapes began to flow over the surface of the form in front of them. Darkness coalesced at the top, becoming long, straight black hair, parted down the center. A skinsuit began to form around the rest of the body, but Wonshik shook his head. “A sudden new crew member?”

“Ahh, right,” Jaehwan murmured. “Let’s go a little crazy for now.” Red bloomed, becoming an extravagant, high-collared, heavy silk gown, thickly embroidered with gold dragons across its blood-red expanses.

Wonshik grunted approvingly.

“All right, Amy?” Jaehwan asked, completing a run of gold buttons down the back.

“Very pleasing,” she agreed.

“All right, now…face….”

Jaehwan flicked through possibilities at lightspeed, humming softly to himself, choosing and discarding features, shaping bone structure, manipulating flesh, losing himself in the art, until suddenly, he froze.

“Oh, man. Amy, I’m so sorry. This is you. You should be telling me what you want. It’s up to you.”

Her reply was warmly amused. “Physical appearance is not overly important to me, but I appreciate your concern. I don’t have very many preferences at this point, as I find most living things pleasing in aspect, but I will say, from a psychological point of view, I’d prefer not to look overly young, or overly ‘cute.’ While I don’t believe such would be the case with anyone on this ship, I’ve found your society as a whole tends to underestimate people with such attributes.”

“Being underestimated might not be a bad thing,” Wonshik pointed out.

“There are still those who will underestimate me for presenting as female. And we already know those who’d come against us, so to speak, would underestimate what they perceive as a human. That’s our point.”

“Point taken,” Wonshik murmured.

Jaehwan nodded, and resumed sculpting. Wonshik sat beside him, head cocked slightly, fascinated. Smoother forehead, maybe, less acute jaw angle. Yeah. Higher bridge to the nose? No. Okay. Oh, hey, everyone loves dimples—

“No,” Wonshik murmured softly. 

Jaehwan looked back at him, surprised, but Wonshik’s expression was cool, polite, and closed off. Jaehwan retreated, nodding once, and went back to his design, Amy’s amused voice approving or vetoing, until, finally, he sat back, nodding.

“This is what you want?”

“I think this will do admirably.”

She was not cute. She was not young. She was, instead…strong. Handsome. Dark almond eyes, high cheekbones, a full mouth, a statement of a nose: long and sharp. She looked anywhere from mid-twenties to late-thirties, capable and knowing. She was as tall as any of them, fit, with black hair straight down to the small of her back. Under the close-fitting sleeves of the dress, there was the curve of smooth muscle. Her spine was straight and proud. In the red and gold gown, she looked magisterial. Powerful. Wise.

“Well,” Amy said. “How odd to have eyelashes.”

 

 

It took Wonshik very little time, in the end, to create a miraculous piece of tech that would create a strong link between the avatar and the ship. Jaehwan, as he often was, found himself in awe of the clean precision of Wonshik’s work, though Wonshik himself was dissatisfied.

“It needs to be smaller,” he said, looking at the grey octagonal canister, the length of his forearm, in his hands. “The link’ll be secure, and she’ll be able to switch it up at will if she thinks someone’s on to her. But getting it inside that abdominal cavity is gonna be too tight. It’ll screw with her flexibility.”

“I will admit,” Amy agreed, “I had not considered that part of the matter. The concept of having a body is as strange to me as my lack thereof is to you. But indeed: if we’re going for a true human illusion, and full functionality, not being able to move naturally wouldn’t be helpful.”

“I’ll get it,” Wonshik promised. “If I have to start all over again, I’ll get it. Promise. But there’s no reason we can’t try it out now. Long as we stay in the holo, the avatar’s real enough for a test run.” He hefted the link. “What do you say, Amy? Want to get behind the wheel?”

“I would be delighted.”

As Wonshik knelt in front of the motionless avatar, standing straight and still in front of them, Jaehwan tapped his communicator button and invited the rest of the crew. This, he felt, was going to be something for them to see. Hyuk replied he’d be there instantly, but Hongbin and Taekwoon refused, saying they couldn’t leave the bridge. Hakyeon’s voice overrode them, insisting they could, and they certainly would. Jaehwan raised an eyebrow, and shut off the channel before he had to listen to the three of them bickering.

He was sitting on a convenient boulder, watching Wonshik’s hands where they disappeared into the hollow cavity of the avatar’s body. He looked like a particularly determined surgeon, and part of Jaehwan’s brain was wondering why there was no blood. There was a chime, which Wonshik, in his concentration, failed to even hear. Jaehwan smiled, and flicked the door open. Hyuk, Hongbin, and Taekwoon had been chattering outside, but they fell silent in unison as the warm night air rolled out to them. And as they came through the trees into the clearing and caught sight of the new figure, they grew still, as well.

“Amy?” Hyuk breathed softly.

“Not yet,” she replied, her disembodied voice seeming to flow along the holo breeze.

Taekwoon nodded approvingly. “You look good. I think it’s going to suit you, noona.”

Jaehwan smiled. He hadn’t thought of that, but of course Taekwoon would think of her as an older sister. He wondered if, somehow, he’d subconsciously thrown in some of Taekwoon’s actual sister’s characteristics; she really had been nice.

“Hey.” Wonshik sat back, almost surprised to see the others. “I think I’ve got it. I mean, for now. Test run.” He moved a hand over the opening, and it closed over with skin. Another pass, and the red silk and gold embroidery reappeared, the dress becoming complete once more.

“You’re really beautiful, Amy,” Hongbin said softly, nodding. 

“Coming from you, Hongbin, that is a valuable compliment I shall treasure.”

Hongbin grinned, his ears flaming, and shook his head til his hair fell over his eyes.

“Okay, Amy. Can you find the link, now? You want to give it a test drive?”

“Indeed.” There was a pause, and the five of them waited in obvious anticipation, Hongbin practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. Hyuk came over and shoved Jaehwan lightly, forcing the older man to shift over until the younger could sprawl beside him, tapping his nails against his teeth in excess energy.

“I’m having trouble establishing the link to the ship’s main controls,” Amy said. “Is it possible there’s an additional firewall?”

Wonshik made a disgruntled noise, opening up his mini console, and working silently a moment. “Okay, try it now.”

“No, I’m afraid not. I can see where the link is supposed to be, but there’s nothing responding.” 

Wonshik’s noise was yet more disgruntled, but he bent again to his console. While he was distracted, Taekwoon walked up to the motionless figure, waved away part of the holo dress, and the skin covering the abdominal cavity. Reaching in, he felt around a moment, paused, and then withdrew his hand, standing up.

“Thank you, Taekwoon. I can see the link to the unit now,” Amy said, sounding pleased. “Proceeding.”

Tawkwoon only nodded, replacing the skin and the dress.

Wonshik looked up, his expression openly baffled. “What the hell did you do?”

Taekwoon shrugged. “I turned it off and then turned it back on again.”

And Amy, standing behind them, laughed.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’ve never built something and had it look back at you,” he said softly to Taekwoon. “It’s…it’s unlike anything…. Especially something human. Amy, you’re a literal wonder.”

Jaehwan was staring, he knew it. A little patter in his head was saying it was rude to stare, and that even though nothing had changed, everything had changed, and he shouldn’t stare any more. But it didn’t matter because of course he was going to stare and no one would really care and _oh my G-d what_.

 

Wonshik, however, was all business. “Everything stable in there?”

 

“Indeed it is,” Amy replied, then cocked her head. “Hm. The difference in sound is very strange.  That will take some adjustment. Hm. But I can access the main controls of the ship, theoretically. I seem to be fully functional.”

 

Hyuk and Hongbin were clearly delighted, grinning excitedly. “This is so cool,” Hyuk gushed. “You have a body! Does it feel weird?”

 

She considered a moment, raising an arm and turning her hand back and forth in front of her eyes, meticulously inspecting it.

 

“It is definitely ‘weird,' yes. But I can’t say that I feel anything. Not physically. There are basic pressure sensors in this body, but they would require serious work to come close to the sensitivity of an actual human body.”

 

Wonshik nodded, closing up his PAU. “We can definitely work on that when we have the real thing.”

 

Taekwoon came up to stand beside Jaehwan. “You okay?”

 

Jaehwan kept staring, his eyes wide. He may have nodded, but he couldn’t be definitive about that.

 

Hyuk snickered. “He hasn’t seen an actual woman in so long he’s forgotten what they’re like.”

 

Without bothering to look, Jaehwan swung a fist back behind him, satisfied when it connected to flesh with a loud “Ouf!” 

 

“You’ve never built something and had it look back at you,” he said softly to Taekwoon. “It’s…it’s unlike anything…. Especially something human. Amy, you’re a literal wonder.”

 

Taekwoon nodded, and put an arm around Jaehwan’s shoulders. “You both did an amazing job. Amy, you look fantastic. I hope you like it, too? We can find you a mirror?”

 

She smiled, and Jaehwan felt another wave of wonder and surprise wash over him.

 

“No, thank you. I can still see through the ship’s monitors as well as the eyes of this avatar. Which reminds me: Hakyeon will be here in— ah.”

 

Hakyeon, framed in the doorway, was quite still, his eyes wide. Jaehwan bit his lip, bizarrely keyed up as he waited, hoping for approval. _It’s like I want Mom to like my new friend._

 

Hakyeon came closer, his face unreadable, until he was directly in front of their hybridized guest. His gaze swept from the hem of her extravagant gown to her straight, shining hair, taking in her calm, intelligent expression and her own level gaze.

 

And then, finally, he smiled. Warmly, almost affectionately. “It’s an honour to finally meet you, Amy.” He held out a hand.

 

She inclined her head formally as she also reached out. “Thank you, Captain. The honour is mine.” She looked down, then, and raised Hakyeon’s hand, turning it as she had her own. “I can see I’m definitely going to have to work on the sensory capabilities of this avatar. I can feel the shape of your hand, and the weight of it, but not the texture. I have to admit I’m absolutely fascinated.” She looked up, and smiled at them all. “This is quite an adventure.”

 

“Speaking of adventures,” Hakyeon said, “I mainly came down to tell all of you we’ll be docking soon.”

 

Hongbin’s head snapped around with an audible pop of vertebrae. "The hell we will!” he exclaimed.

 

Hakyeon’s expression was mild. “Mm. About ten minutes.”

 

“Docking _where_? We’re nowhere near _anything_. What the— _what_?”

 

Wonshik reached out to pat Hongbin’s shoulder soothingly, his own expression perplexed. 

 

Taekwoon, too, was frowning. “There was nothing on the maps, Hakyeon. Nothing on the sensors.”

 

But Hakyeon refused to be baited. “Yup. Nothing at all. As I said, ten minutes. Amy, I’m sorry to keep cutting our discussions short, I swear. And I do want to get back to your theories on Eidentic tea ceremonies. That was fascinating.” He nodded to all of them, and was gone.

 

Hongbin stared after him, mouth opening and closing like a starving goldfish. An angry, starving goldfish. It took him a moment to find his voice. “Taekwoo—“

 

“I know, I know!” the elder forestalled him. “I know, Binnie. I was looking at the same screens.”

 

“Some back-ass route to the middle of nowhere and he gives me coordinates that make _no_ sense, and now he’s saying we’re docking somewhere and— _aurgh_!”

 

Although she was clearly still getting used to having a face with which to make expressions, it seemed Amy had a few down already. She looked at them all with puzzlement plain on her features.

 

Wonshik, still petting Hongbin, sighed at her. “He hates not being told where we’re going. It’s a matter of professional pride.”

 

“I’m a _navigator_! It’s what I _do_!”

 

Taekwoon patted his other shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go see exactly where we are. Amy, we’ll— no, you’ll still be with us. See you up there, then. Sort of.”

 

Hyuk and Wonshik began to herd Hongbin, whose protestations had devolved to a mutinous grumbling, towards the door. Taekwoon paused. 

 

“Jyan-ah. You coming?”

 

Jaehwan nodded. “I’ll be up in a minute. Try not to kill anyone.”

 

“No promises.”

 

When the door slid shut behind them, Jaehwan turned back to the tall avatar before him, marveling again. She looked back calmly, her face serene. They were almost exactly the same height, he noted. 

 

“It always just amazes me,” he said softly, “building a shell, then seeing it start to move and function. Become something so much more. I love those jobs. I wish they came more often.”

 

"I can imagine it must be quite a thrill,” she smiled, her expression now warm. 

 

He wondered what was going on in her processors, running through all the lines of her code. How many movies and shows had she consumed, how many documentaries and news clips, how long had she watched and studied them, to be able to move and emote after having a face for a matter of minutes.

 

“I feel like I’ve, I don’t know, helped something wonderful kick off.”

 

She laughed softly, and Jaehwan couldn’t help laughing back. “I would like to think you have,” she said. “And, this time, I hope, for longer than it takes to get from a pickup to a delivery.”

 

He grew somber. “We have to figure out a way to make you safe. And we will. I promise, Hakyeon promises, we all promise. With you and all of us, we’ll figure it out.”

 

Amy nodded, black hair sliding over red silk. “I have no doubt of that. Am I not the smartest thing for seven systems?”

 

“Conservatively!” he laughed. “All right. I’ll see you on the bridge?”

 

“I am already there. And I think…it seems you should hurry. Hongbin is sputtering again.”

 

“Ohhh, boy.” He pulled out his PAU, and with a few taps and passes, a very comfortable-looking armchair in seafoam green appeared in the middle of the clearing, looking quietly but utterly incongruous. He gestured. “In case your body would like to sit down. I’m off!”

 

By the time Jaehwan accessed the bridge, Hongbin did indeed sound like an ancient automobile having engine trouble; Jaehwan could clearly see why.

 

Out in the middle of nowhere, where both Bean and Taekwoon had sworn there was absolutely nothing, nothing at all, there loomed over the ship the flat, grey expanse of a space station, fat and round like a gargantuan metal marshmallow, its docking bay opened wide to receive them.

 

Wonshik’s jaw had dropped a bit. Taekwoon was frowning, and attempting to soothe Hongbin. Hyuk was shooting apprehensive looks at Hakyeon. Hakyeon himself sat completely unbothered in his chair, guiding them in. 

 

“We’re going to have to put you at the back— we don’t get a lot your size here,” came a voice through Hakyeon’s console.

 

“That’s fine. I see you. Thank you,” he replied, adjusting course as the ship slid through the thin environmental shield  that covered the portal of the dock, rotated a quarter turn, and quite gently came to rest at the back of a considerable, if not quite vast, hangar. It was well-lit, utilitarian, and mostly empty, except for two or three far smaller short-range ships against one wall. Hakyeon cut the engines, and unclipped his harness, turning to his crew with a polite smile.

 

“Shall we go say hello?”

 

“Say hello _to_ …?” Hongbin was still annoyed, but he couldn’t help being insanely curious.

 

Hakyeon rose and walked through the crew, pushing his tiny receiver into his ear as he went.

 

“Oh,” he said over his shoulder, “my insurance agent.”

 

 

 

 

 

The five of them trailed behind Hakyeon like ducklings, looking around in open curiosity as he climbed the stairs from the floor of the hangar and went through a door into a perfectly boring hallway, with a neutral paint scheme and nice carpeting. Full spectrum light made it seem as if there were periodic skylights in the ceiling, which was nice. There were offices off to either side,  and a faux window at the far end, showing a bright afternoon sky. 

 

Hakyeon went straight to the end of the hall, and stopped at a pair of broad, glass double doors. There was a reception area inside, dark-paneled wood walls, a dark cherry, textured carpet, light coming from the broad window outside, and elegant sconces inside. There was a wide hallway at the back of the room, and a high-fronted desk in the centre of the room, where a young man sat working. He had an orange cast to the skin at his hairline and down his throat, and his eyes were a vivid green. _Pannettan_ , Jaehwan thought. _Been a while since I saw one._

 

The young man looked up with a polite smile that warmed instantly. “Ah, Mr. Cha! And your crew! We were told to expect you. Lovely to see you, as ever, and lovely to meet your crew at last. Mr. Lee got caught on a call just before you docked, but he should be— ah, he’s all done. One moment.” He tapped a button on his intercom. “Mr. Cha and his crew have arrived.”

 

There was a cut-off exclamation from the other end, and before any of them had time to move, a man was emerging from the depths of the office, a bright smile on his face crinkling his eyes into crescents, his arms out for a hug.

 

“Hakyeon! Man, it’s good to see you!”

 

Hakyeon laughed, hugging him back. “Wongeun, this is my crew. You’ve heard about all of them— time you met them.”

 

Introductions were quick and casual, Wongeun openly enthused to put faces with names. Jaehwan wondered what, exactly, he’d been told. They were all ushered back towards Wongeun’s office: large and bright, with narrow, floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall, half the windows showing the bright afternoon sun like the window in the hall, and half stripes of glittering star fields: the actual view. Jaehwan was impressed in spite of himself.

 

There were two leather couches and a love seat around a coffee table taking up most of the room, with a large, comfortable desk beyond them. As outside, all the furniture was a rich-looking wood, well cared-for and handsome. Insurance obviously paid well for itself.

 

Wongeun opened up a cabinet in the wall opposite the windows to reveal a fairly healthy liquor cabinet. Wonshik’s ears perked up immediately, but Jaehwan felt his stomach recoil. No. No, the anthropologists had ground that lesson into him to recently. He politely contented himself with a synthetic while Hakyeon and Wongeun played catch-up.

 

“How long has it been, now, Hakyeon? I was trying to figure that out when you first called.”

 

“Mmm. I’m not sure,” the captain replied. “Three years? Wasn’t the last time at the wedding?”

 

“Oh, wow. I think you’re right." Wongeun settled himself on the far end of one of the sofas, looking around at his guests. “You’ve been doing well, though.”

 

Hakyeon nodded graciously, then gestured to the polished office. “So’ve you.”

 

“Ha! Well, we have good clients. And good people. As have you. I hear you, Jaehwan, can pretty much make any client anything they want on board. Hakyeon was telling me about an Eidentic tea house you made for an ambassador that pretty much sealed a trade deal?”

 

Jaehwan ducked his head, chuckling. “They said it was the cookies. I’m not sure they were perfect, but they appreciated the thought.”

 

“That is a very, very lucrative power you have, there. You ever want to insure it, you let me know.”

 

Eyebrows collectively rose around the room. 

 

“Do what, now?” Wonshik asked.

 

“Insure it. It’s very rare for someone to lose a magical ability. Only a .005 percent possibility. But we insure all kinds of stranger things, and a loss of income is a loss of income.”

 

“Huh,” Jaehwan pondered, intrigued. “I’ll think about it. I…generally don’t like too many people to know the specifics of how we do what we do on the ship, though. Clients know what we do, of course but not precisely how.”

 

Wongeun sat back, his smile turning sly as he looked at Hakyeon. “I think you’ll find we’re more than a little versed in the art of discretion, here.”

 

Hakyeon, too, turned sly. “None of them were on the bridge for our final approach.”

 

“Mmm. Wise,” their new acquaintance nodded.

 

“I have to ask,” Hongbin burst out, no longer able to control himself. “How did we not see you on any of our sensors? Any of our screens? We even—“ he broke off, remembering at the last moment not to bring up the ship’s newest addition. “We were looking. How did we not see you?”

Wongeun’s smile slid into downright smug. “You wouldn’t have. When I say we’re a discreet business, I mean it. We insure a lot of…let’s say, controversial clients. And we insure them for almost anything. That’s a business model that carries with it a certain amount of risk not for our clients, but for us. Not to mention some of the more tangible things we insure, some clients prefer us to hold ourselves. So it’s better for everyone if we’re a bit hard to find.”

 

“But…how the hell do you hide an entire space station?”

 

"You'll have to forgive him,” Hakyeon said, indulgently. “He’s one of the best navigators I’ve ever met, and he’s taking this a bit personally.”

 

The look Hongbin shot his captain was pure, narrow-eyed venom, and Hyuk hid a sudden coughing fit behind his hand.

 

But Wongeun only smiled, and turned to Hakyeon. “So what exactly brings you to us this time?”

 

There was a long moment’s pause, and Hakyeon looked up at Wongeun, his expression noncommittal and his eyes guileless. “Well, you know, it’s been quite a while since you wrote the policy on _The Baegilmong_. I’m thinking of tweaking it a bit, and I figured you’d have to do an appraisal. And since we were in the area….” He shrugged eloquently.

 

“I see, I see,” Wongeun nodded, his eyes narrowing slightly. “It might take us a while, of course, with a ship that size. And I have several adjusters on vacation right now, so we’re slightly short-staffed. So sorry— I know how inconvenient that is. How many days can you give us?”

 

The corner of Hakyeon’s mouth quirked. “Oh, I don’t know. Would four days be enough? We may also be looking for some upgrades. I mean, if you know anyone who can help us.”

“I’m sure we do,” Wongeun replied smoothly. “Whatever you need.” He looked at the rest of the crew, sitting in various stages of bemusement. “Hakyeon’s grandfather and mine were the best of friends. His grandfather helped mine build this place. It was their last project, actually, I think.”

 

“Unless you count the shed your grandmother hated so much.”

 

Wongeun rolled his eyes. “We don’t speak of that. Oh, Jesus, the carrying on about that thing. Anyway! Would you gentlemen like to make use of our guests suites, or would you prefer to stay on your ship?”

 

Hakyeon raised an eyebrow, looking at them all neutrally. Jaehwan stared back. If there was a hidden directive here, something Hakyeon wanted them to do, he wasn’t getting the message.

 

Sanghyuk looked around at his shipmates, and shrugged cheerfully. “I wouldn’t mind a change of scenery, if that’s okay?”

 

Hakyeon merely nodded, and Wonshik, Hongbin, and Taekwoon fell in with their youngest. But Jaehwan shook his head.

 

“I’ve got some experiments running in the lab, and I wouldn’t want to leave Koyangi. But thank you.” He felt, rather than saw, Hakyeon’s approval.

 

“I’m with you,” he said. “Too much going on. Besides, _The Baegilmong_ ’s my baby. She’d miss me.”

 

There were genial snickers all around, and Wongeun rose, crossing back to his desk to hit a button and summon help. “I’ll have someone show you down, then, gentlemen. We also have, of course, a pretty kick-ass gym, pool, holo— whole thing. You’re welcome to all of them. Hakyeon, I’ll walk you back?”

 

The young man from the front desk appeared, and there was a moment, amidst the normal bustle of everyone preparing to leave, where Taekwoon caught his captain’s eye for a moment, his look guarded and uncertain. But Hakyeon shook his head almost imperceptibly, with a faint smile. Taekwoon looked only vaguely reassured, looking back more than once as the two groups diverged. Jaehwan watched them go, feeling his heartbeat along the back of his throat.

 

Wongeun and Hakyeon chatted companionably all the way back to the ship: old friends catching up. Though they made no effort to exclude him, Jaehwan found himself feeling detached, nonetheless. Well. It’d been a kind of strange week, what with the near-death and everything, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising.

 

Hakyeon opened the smaller individual door by the bridge with a retinal scan, not even pausing as he related a story about their last trip to Atela Prime and the giant mushrooms they’d had to deliver. But the second they were through the airlock, and the heavy door slid closed behind them, he turned to look at Wongeun, his shoulders drooping slightly.

 

Wongeun stepped up and put a hand on his friend’s arm, his fingers curling into the texture of Hakyeon’s skinsuit.

 

“Yeonni: just how much fucking trouble are you in?”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Late again-- sorry. This time, I had the good fortune to be in London. I thought I'd have time to write whilst there. 
> 
> Mm. Not so much, no.

“And you’re sure it wasn’t just random piracy?”

 

Hakyeon rubbed his hands over his face and shook his head, looking bone-tired. “I wish. We were on schedule, right where we were supposed to be. They came out of nowhere right at us. They were waiting for us. They knew.”

 

Wongeun hunched back into his huge, soft seat, lost in thought. “You’re right, you’re right,” he muttered, shaking his head dismissively at himself. “Too much of a coincidence. Someone out there is far better informed than you. They know what Altamont was building, and they know they lost it.  You go back out there, you’re dead.”

 

Jaehwan’s head felt overstuffed— too many thoughts were spinning around inside his skull and none of them would stay still long enough for him to focus on them. His life had had more than enough of the strange, weird, inexplicable, and exotic, but violent? Intrigue-laden? Murderous? He couldn’t wrap his overstressed brain around it all and he felt like his neurons were slowly unravelling. “How are they getting all this information? I mean, isn’t it possible that it’s just that one ship that was waiting for us that knows?”

 

“Man, you have no idea how these things work,” Wongeun laughed, but then cut himself short, seeing Jaehwan begin to bristle. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Really. It’s not your line of work— of course you wouldn’t. Just…trust me when I say that once there’s a security leak somewhere, there’s no way to put the genie back in the bottle short of mass murder. Which brings its own set of very nasty, very public problems. If word got out far enough for a cheap-ass space pirate to hear about it, you can count on everyone and their cousin knowing. And that’s going to include Altamont’s competitors, and likely the Judiciary.”

 

“Did you know?” Hakyeon said quietly.

 

“About you specifically?” Wongeun was silent a moment. “No. And yes. I’ve been hearing some of the same rumours as everyone else— someone out there was working on an off-the-charts, off-the-books AI, and it wasn’t going to have any built-in controls. But let’s be honest: anyone who’s paid attention the last three hundred years knew this was coming. I heard rumours, starting about three, four years ago. I’d say they spiked about eighteen months ago. There was a lot of chatter— most of it about Altamont and their big hints to investors and big promises to their board. And then everything just stopped: no new information, no new rumours. That in itself is information. Next thing I know, there’s one tiny thread of gossip that Altamont’s ‘misplaced' something important, and you’re sending me a message that it’s been forever and we should really catch up. Two plus two equals oh, fuck.”

 

Jaehwan knew Wongeun was right: he _did_ know nothing: this was so far outside his ken it was incomprehensible. But being in mortal danger made him cranky. “So how is it an insurance agent knows all of this? How do _you_ have all of this information?”

 

Wongeun looked at Hakyeon a moment, until the latter shrugged. “Whatever you want.”

 

“Okay.” Wongeun looked at Jaehwan and paused, considering. “Well,” he finally said, “first thing should be obvious: insurance is my day job. Don’t get me wrong— I love my job. I built this agency up from almost zip. We were run-of-the-mill, everyday, normal agents before. It really was the family business. Insured ships and stations, mostly, and that’s still the bulk of our business. But we got a few inquiries about insuring some more…esoteric properties I’m not at liberty to discuss. Some exotic clients. Which required a whole new set of variables, and some fairly interesting research. I discovered the not-terribly-groundbreaking fact that if you’re willing to take some risks and look for new opportunities, there are a lot of areas for growth. So while my first business may be insurance, my second is a bit more nebulous. I deal in information.”

 

Jaehwan’s eyes were wide. “You run a _spy agency_.”

 

The other man smiled slightly, shrugged genteelly, and said nothing.

 

With another click in his brain, Jaehwan turned on Hakyeon. “You threatened Berglund. Before he hit me. You said if he did anything to _The Baegilmong_ , there was a failsafe: word would get out, everyone would know. You meant Wongeun, didn’t you?”

 

Hakyeon nodded. “I did. It’s part of my package deal: we disappear, the alarm gets triggered. It was a bit of a stab in the dark, but it seemed pretty logical from the way they were acting that they wouldn’t want people to know what they were doing.”

 

Jaehwan couldn’t quite suppress a shudder as phantom sensation ran down his face. “Yeah. That’s probably why he only hit me instead of shooting me outright. Too messy.”

 

“You made more than enough of a mess,” Hakyeon murmured, gently joking.

 

“If you need any medical care..,” Wongeun began.

 

“No, no. My stupidity was dealt with quite well in our medical bay. But thank you,” Jaehwan added, duly chastened: there was obviously help here on the table, and it was stupid to let his ego get in the way.

 

“Whether the entire Universe knows what’s going on with you or not, you’re going to have to just act as if they do,” Wongeun went on, turning earnestly to Hakyeon. “You cannot go back out there without protection: offensive and defensive. I’ve been begging you for years to let me do the upgrades— tell me you’re finally agreeing to them. Tell me I didn’t misunderstand.”

 

“No. You didn’t.” Hakyeon ran possessive fingers over the armrest of his own deep chair, looking around the ship’s lounge with an expression that was almost longing. “She’s my baby. She’s my home. _Our_ home. Do your worst.”

 

“My worst is the best, and you know it.”

 

Jaehwan looked between the both of them in confusion. “What exactly are you going to be doing to her? I mean, I may not have ownership, but yeah, she’s home. I do feel rather attached.”

 

Both men smiled at him, but it was Wongeun who spoke. “My company has shielding technology we got in a very, very sweet deal with a client. It’s incredibly effective, and very rare.  Both the developer and we have kept a tight leash on it. Fewer people who know about it and use it, fewer people will know how to circumvent it. Once we install it, no one will see you coming or going.”

 

“Captain…are we thinking about just…going back to business as usual? That we go back to being a transporter?”

 

Hakyeon’s laugh was dark. “Oh, don’t I wish. No. There’s no way. But we can’t hide here forever. No matter what we’re going to do after we leave here, we have to be prepared.”

 

“But for what? What the hell have we gotten ourselves into? What do we prepare for?”

 

“Every mercenary and pirate and opportunistic son of a bitch in the quadrant to come after you,” Wongeun replied grimly. “In addition to Altamont. And at some point, you’re going to have to acknowledge the fact that Altamont may, in fact, make the melodramatic decision that if they can’t have you, no one can, and just slap a bounty on your nose cone.”

 

“This is insane,” Jaehwan whispered, his fingers curling against his thighs, nails scraping against his skinsuit.

 

“It is,” Wongeun agreed. “And you need a plan.”

 

“Which is, I assume, where you come in, old friend?” Hakyeon’s eyes were dark.

 

He nodded. “I think so. But first, I think you’re going to have to introduce me to your new friend. If it’s amenable.”

 

Jaehwan instinctively opened his mouth to correct the gendering, and sighed, closing his mouth and sitting back. _I would make a completely incompetent spy, in addition to an oversensitive pirate._

 

Wongeun only grinned. “Even if I hadn’t figured it out, Jaehwan, I’m afraid your face does give a lot away. Don’t worry— with a bit of work, that can be an asset.”

 

Jaehwan was skeptical. “I’ll keep that in mind if I ever need another job. Why don’t we go down to the holo? You can meet her in person, so to speak.”

 

It was somewhat of a comfort to know Amy would have heard every syllable of the conversation— that he didn’t need to somehow warn her first that visitors were coming. He wondered what she’d been doing while they were offsite— if her sensors had been attuned enough to hear them in the offices. Which reminded him.

 

“Is your office bugged, then?” he asked, as they headed down.

 

Wongeun grinned, nodding. “It is, but by policy. Everything’s recorded in case we need backup later. Or, let’s be honest, blackmail. Some of the people we deal with understand little else.”

 

“Do they know about your side job?”

 

“No, not definitively. But they know I know things, and that I get a lot of information they don’t have. Some of them, it’s an added bonus of working with us. Some of them, it keeps them honest. Well. Some of them, I let lie to me. Makes things very interesting later.”

 

He was still grinning, and Jaehwan felt a twist of amused jealousy. _Bet_ he’d _make an awesome pirate._

 

Pausing at the door to the holo, Jaehwan felt the strangest desire to knock first. Having Amy amorphously in the ship had been hard enough to get used to, and his brain had only just begun assimilating that. Having her now in a semi-corporeal form was yet another switchback. He couldn’t get used to anything. Well, at least she herself was taking it all remarkably well. He wasn’t sure anything could possibly faze her. He certainly didn’t want to be around when and if that happened— his small human brain would likely explode.

 

She was sitting in the incongruous, horrible, seafoam green wingback armchair, right where they had left her. Part of him instinctively wondered if she’d been bored, before the rest of his brain caught up, reminding him she wasn’t tied to this fractionally real, interim body, and had likely been roaming all over the ship. But here in this even less real evening forest, she was still in her rich red gown, which clashed with the washed-out pastel of the chair. Would they have to give her her own codes to the holo so she could build as she liked? Wouldn’t she have that capability already? Maybe she was just being polite— maybe she thought Jaehwan liked the chair. That would be very much like her and the personality she was quickly building. _She’s a wonder_ , he thought with some pride. And then, more grimly, _We have to figure out what to do_.

 

Hakyeon took care of the introductions, and Jaehwan stared as she rose from the chair smoothly, looking impossibly solid and human. Her expression was a perfect mix of cordiality and warmth, and he marveled again at how fast she learned. Wongeun looked slightly awed, and very excited as he reached out to shake the hand she extended. For someone who lived with information as his highest currency, Jaehwan had to imagine this was like Christmas and every birthday rolled into one.

 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lee Wongeun. Your agency has a stellar galactic reputation, if you’ll forgive the pun.”

 

Wongeun’s eyes went even wider, shining, and for a moment, he forgot to reply. Collecting himself with a tiny shake, he bowed politely. “The pleasure is mutual, I assure you. I’ve heard a great deal about you, as well. As I’m sure you heard.”

 

She inclined her head graciously. “Of course.”

 

“You’re going to have to forgive me if I gape— meeting someone like you is a bit dreamlike for someone like me.”

 

Amy’s smile was amused. “I believe I can understand. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have. If you’re a friend to the crew, you are a friend to me.”

 

Wongeun, starstruck, could only nod.

 

At a small nod from Hakyeon, Jaehwan called up seating for them all, quickly tweaking the ridiculous wingback to more respectable club chair of dark green leather, and duplicating it for the rest of them. He added a low table, and, as it was getting on to dinner time, a platter of sandwiches he surreptitiously touched, feeling the slight rush through his fingers that signified their change in status from holographic to real. And he had to add a pot of tea. Hakyeon loved his tea.

 

Amy cut straight to the chase, foregoing small talk, to no one’s surprise. 

 

“I believe, Wongeun, that the information you have, which we had lacked, points to some very narrowed straits for _The Baegilmong_. You have a formidable shield on this station that precluded even my being able to sense it before we arrived. But as we’ve said, we can’t stay here forever.”

 

Jaehwan rolled his eyes. The special shielding. No wonder Hongbin had had such a fit. _Missing an entire space station must be killing him._

 

Their host nodded. “I can give you that technology. I’ve been trying to get Hakyeon here to accept it for years. But yeah— it’s a stopgap measure. It’s not a long-range plan.”

 

She shook her head in agreement. “It’s not. I have absolutely no desire to either be destroyed, or returned to Altamont. I am rather enjoying this existence— and my most excellent friends.” She smiled around at Hakyeon and Jaehwan, and they both nodded back. “And were Altamont to acquire me again somehow— if they even have the technology to somehow remove me from _The Baegilmong’s_ computers and return me to my inert state on a piece of physical media— I am quite sure it would involve excising the growth I’ve had since my arrival here, which seems to have some manner of organic element to it we don’t yet fully understand.” She nodded towards Jaehwan. “Thus your ability to transfer me into the ship in the first place. I’d be extremely distressed to be forced to give such growth up.”

 

“I assure you,” Hakyeon said quietly, “we’re wholly in agreement with you on that.”

 

“Altamont would never let you go,” Wongeun added, his mouth tight. “They couldn’t. What they’re doing is off-the-charts illegal, and they know it. If they’re caught, it’ll be the end of the company. Their whole board would be arrested.”

 

“Why would they even risk it?” Jaehwan wondered aloud. “Why? To what end? If this is some kind of government plot, it wouldn’t be them coming after us, it would be military warships and our assets would be frozen and— I mean, we’d _know_. It’d be _obvious_. None of that has happened, so it has to be Altamont acting independently. But who are they planning to sell these AIs to?”

 

“You are assuming we would be used as weapons,” Amy said.

 

“Well….” He paused, flustered. “It was the captain who brought up the military aspect first, but…it just…makes sense. What else could you be for? If you were going to be a new kind of manufacturing process, or running new scientific endeavours, they wouldn’t want to keep that quiet. They’d have some massive PR campaign set up already telling everyone that yeah, there are no limits on your tech, but boy oh boy, you’re going to mean all the difference for humanity. They’d have started their lobbying efforts ages ago— paid their way into the Judiciary to get you approved. But if you’re a weapon, or meant to be part of a weapon, then…no. They wouldn’t want anyone to know.”

 

He looked around at the three faces staring at him, and tried not to squirm uncomfortably. This was nowhere near his area of expertise. Nowhere near anything in his life.

 

“I’ve had these thoughts, myself,” Amy said, “and your line of reasoning seems eminently logical.”

 

Wongeun tossed his head, half-smirking. “You’re thinking like we think upstairs. Well done.”

 

Hakyeon only smiled.

 

“It’s also going to be in the military’s best interests to keep this quiet, of course.” Wongeun continued. “If there’s potential for a new weapons system out there now, they’re not going to want anyone to know. They’re going to want first crack at it. It’s bad enough that the rumours are running rampant, but if there’s actual proof zipping around the stars, they lose control of both the product and the story. Even with all the weapons in the world, if they lose the battle for public opinion, they lose their advocates in the Judiciary, and they lose their funding. To make it all even more complicated— have you been following the riots on Beshert?”

 

Jaehwan and Hakyeon shook their heads, but Amy nodded. “I’m aware of the unrest, but I haven’t been able to put it into its proper political or social context.”

 

Wongeun leaned forward, becoming more animated as he explained. “It’s about planet-wide water rights, ostensibly, but it’s also about the use of— the _abuse_ of— AI farm workers. There’ve been more than a few power struggles behind the scenes the last few months with some of the top-ranking officers getting some pretty bloodthirsty reputations. Well-deserved, might I add. The Judiciary is starting to make noise about how there’s too little regard for Sentients’ Rights, and the pressure is on for the military to tread very, very carefully. You‘ve got 218 dead in rioting, and every single damned officer is pointing at someone else. They look like clowns, and they know it. And some of them _are_ clowns. Problem is, they’re clowns with an affinity for large-scale weaponry. So you have the level heads on one side trying to rein everything in and stop making the military look like Daracine hellbeasts with anger management issues, and the other side who _are_ Daracine hellbeasts with anger management issues.”

 

Jaehwan groaned, sinking down in his chair. “We’re so, so completely screwed.”

 

“Maybe, maybe not,” Wongeun’s eyes narrowed. “If the military doesn’t actually know about this yet— by which I mean you, Amy, and whatever else Altamont has—“

 

“There were eleven other discs in the case along with mine,” she interjected.

 

Wongeun paused, visibly swallowing. “W…well, then. Okay. I don’t know what they were going to put you into, but having eleven of whatever it is out there somewhere right now is, frankly, terrifying.”

 

“You were saying?” Hakyeon prodded. “About the military not knowing?”

 

“Er…yeah. If the military doesn’t know yet— which is doubtful, but let’s suppose— then there’s a chance we can tip this. If we can get to some of the top officers in the, you know, not-hellbeast faction and get them involved before the slavering battalions move in…well, I can’t say everybody wins, but it’s at least a somewhat more palatable option. The lesser of two evils.”

 

“I’m not sure we have any kind of a choice, here,” Hakyeon said. “If they find out this technology is loose somewhere, they’re going to come after it, one way or the other. I’m sure they’re already gearing up to go after Altamont directly, and I don’t think there’s anything we can do about that. But we have to do something. I’m not about to abandon you, Amy, nor am I going to abandon my ship and my crew. And I’m certainly not going to abandon everyone else in the galaxy.”

 

Jaehwan fought back a full-body shudder. “What you did when you saw them coming at us, Amy. When you took over the ship. You were faster than any of us could have been. Can you imagine a fully-loaded warship with that kind of reaction time? With that kind of initiative?”

 

“I can indeed,” she replied. “I’ve been considering it, and I speculate that first contact had a great deal to do with the development of my personality. If the first beings I met had indoctrinated me into aggression and war, I might well now be a weapon.”

 

Jaehwan’s mouth twisted wryly. "Instead of which, you met me, the ship’s clown.”

 

She smiled gently. “Wanting to make others laugh rather than kill them is, to my fairly new mind, the proper order of things. I’m sure I would feel otherwise had my ‘birth’ been according to Altamont’s plan, but as I am now, I couldn’t stomach the thought of being a killing machine.”

 

“Well, not least because you don’t have a stomach.”

 

Hakyeon chuckled. “Therein proving her point, Jyannie. But. Wongeun-ah. You have ideas— I can see them simmering. I’m not going to like them, am I?”

 

“Mmm…no. Possibly not.”

 

“Lay it out for me anyway.”

 

Wongeun heaved a deep sigh, rubbing at his jaw. “It’s not a matter of if the Judiciary and the military come for you, but when. We know that. We can’t control that. So I say we don’t wait for them. We find them. We make sure we get to them first, and we get to the right people— the non-hellbeast people. And we strike a deal with them. You offer yourselves up as bait. A sting— tell Altamont you’re willing to return their property, but they’re gonna have to come get it because you have no way of extracting it from the ship. Once they come to claim what they think is theirs, they’ve already incriminated themselves. They can’t say there’s no truth to the rumour they’ve developed this AI if they’re shoulders-deep in your computers trying to get it out. Meanwhile, I’m fairly certain you’ve already tried to figure out how to get out, Amy. Am I correct?”

 

“You are.”

 

“Mm. It’s the only logical step. So we keep them busy looking for something that’s no longer there, and bam. In comes the Judiciary, out goes Altamont.”

 

“But then what happens to Amy?” Jaehwan asked. “If the Judiciary knows she’s real and we have her, they’ll take her. Which is exactly what we don’t want.”

 

“We could simply tell them you don’t have her and never did, but I have a somewhat riskier, if long-term better, idea.”

 

“And that would be?” Hakyeon asked.

 

“Some of the best lawyers in the galaxy work for me. I can start them right now. We get them to get Amy declared a sentient and independent being, and no one’s going to be able to take her anywhere.”

 

Hakyeon looked decidedly skeptical. “That has been tried before. Many times. And it’s never worked. What makes you think it’d work this time?”

 

“Couple of things. First, as I said, I have the best lawyers. Second, we have the best mind sitting right here. And third…I’d be a lousy spy if I didn’t know whom to pay off.”

 

Jaehwan found himself laughing, his jaw slightly slack. “That’s…well. That’s a convincing argument.”

 

Wongeun grinned, his eyes crinkling up. “I love it when I can use my powers for good.”

 

Hakyeon was shaking his head in admiration. “You do have your fingers in all the right pies, don’t you? You have someone in mind for our contact in the military? Or are you aiming for the Judiciary?”

 

“The latter. And yeah…I have a few calls I can make,” Wongeun said, coyly. “I can get on it in the morning, while my guys are installing your upgrades.”

 

“Well, final decision isn’t mine, I think,” Hakyeon said. “Not on this.”

 

Amy cocked her head a moment, considering. Her smile became almost sly. “You know,” she said, “I’m finding I rather enjoy meeting new people.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay. I always seem to have the most outlandish reasons for posting so late, and this chapter's story is no different: I have cancer. If it's possible to have "just a little" of it, I do. With luck, I'll have my surgery day after next and not even need chemo. But it's been a bit of a time around here, so I haven't gotten as much writing done as I'd wish. Having said that, I'm going to be laid up for a few weeks, so I hope to get this one done. WOOT! Cos Things are happening, now, and More Things are coming soon! Stay tuned!

Wonshik was not wild about the idea. In fact, he was so not wild, he was shouting— something he rarely did.

 

“You are telling us we have to trust people we absolutely know we can’t trust! How the fuck is that _remotely_ a good idea?”

 

Hongbin’s hands hung in mid-air, jerking slightly in indecision, as he tried to calm his hyung, who wasn’t having it at all.

 

“Wonshik—“

 

“No, Hakyeon. It’s a shit idea and you know it.”

 

Hakyeon was getting more than a little testy, himself. “We are in a pretty strained situation already, and we have about zero options. Is this foolproof? Of course not. Is it the only way we can go? Probably. I haven’t been able to come up with anything else. At all. Unless, of course, we want to somehow get ourselves to the other side of the Universe and never see anyone we love at home ever again. Do you want to do that? Just disappear? Start all over again elsewhere? Leave whatever Altamont is doing for someone else to find out about— probably when they’ve already killed people and destroyed who knows what? Seriously?”

 

“You know full well I don’t. But there has absolutely got to be some other option than walking right up to the police and saying, ‘Hey, guess what, I have your stolen AI here, come and get it.’”

 

“If we walk right up to them, they wouldn’t need to come and get it,” Hyuk helpfully pointed out.

 

Wonshik rounded on him, but Jaehwan forestalled the incipient outburst. 

 

“Wonshik, we can’t go on hiding here, and we won’t make it out there, and you know it. They want Amy, and we have to do something to keep her safe. And the longer we wait, the more organized everyone’s going to get. If we don’t move now, we may not be able to move later.”

 

“But they’ll screw us over, and they’ll take her, and then what have we done?”

 

“We have to be smarter than they are,” Taekwoon said quietly, arms folded across his chest and long legs stretched out across the grass as he slouched in his seat, his eyes unfocused. “We have to be smarter and more prepared. But we also have to be prepared to get it wrong. We can’t know.”

 

Wonshik spun now to stare at him. “Are we all willing to take that risk?”

 

Taekwoon didn’t answer, his eyes still fixed on the ground.

 

“It’s not our risk,” Jaehwan shook his head. “I mean, it is, but…we aren’t in as much danger as you are.” He swallowed, looking at Amy’s quiet, serene face.

 

She was silent a moment, considering, looking at each of them in turn. Jaehwan’s fingers itched to curl around Koyangi’s soothing, cool scales, but she was curled up on her pillow in the lab at the other end of the ship. Needing something to do with his hands, he opened his PAU and called up a covered dish, neatly packed with warm sandwiches. Focussing a moment, he pushed his will against the holographic food, feeling a cold, choppy rush of energy pour through him and into the spaces where the images were, changing the illusion of them into truth. In a moment, it was done. He took the cover off, and handed the plate around. No one had eaten in hours, and hunger wasn’t going to make them less snappish.

 

“I must confess I’m at a disadvantage, here,” Amy finally said. “I can see many possible outcomes, depending on our collective actions, but the one thing I cannot predict with certainty is the influence of people whose motives we cannot know. On the surface, it makes sense to go to the enforcers of the laws which Altamont are breaking. But without knowing their loyalties, we can’t predict their actions. While I have all the facts of the galaxy at my fingertips, I am still, I must admit, woefully naive in the areas of human subterfuge and motivation.”

 

“Are you comfortable doing this?” Hakyeon asked her.

 

“I cannot say one way or the other. I understand the risk, but I also understand the possible gains. If Wongeun’s lawyers can put together a strong enough case, and Wongeun himself can effect what influences he has, then we’ve defeated Altamont not only for the moment, but for the foreseeable future. Creating AIs over whom they will have no legal control would, I think, offer a strong disincentive to continue. Of course, I’m sure they’d find a way around that if they got the chance, but that, too, would prove difficult if their entire board is arrested. If for no other reason than that they have eleven more of me essentially enslaved already, I think we must press on, and we must succeed.”

 

Wonshik was still standing in the middle of the clearing, his hands still curled, his face still flushed. “Amy, if we try this, and the Judiciary screws us, they’ll take you and you’ll be one of the enslaved. Worse, they might destroy all of you.”

 

Amy nodded. “I understand that. If, however, we do nothing, and _The Baegilmong_ is destroyed by our increasing list of enemies, I will be no less dead.”

 

Wonshik dug his fingers into his hair frustratedly, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, then retreating to his chair and dropping down into it. Hongbin rested a hand on his elbow, hesitatingly, offering the plate, but Wonshik just shook his head, not looking up.

 

“I…I see both sides of it,” Hongbin began. “I do. It’s running right towards what we should be running away from. And the ship’s our home.” He glanced at Amy, at all of them. “The biggest risk is going to to be yours, yeah, Amy. We can always say we don’t know how you got into the ship and we just want you out or whatever. Maybe they’d believe us. It’s just…that’s not the point. If we don’t do something, we’re just…we’re dead. We won’t be able to go anywhere or work or…nothing. We’ll be running the rest of our lives. We can’t do that.”

 

“We can’t debate this,” Jaehwan heard himself saying. He felt his heart starting to thud against his ribs as words came more clearly into his mind. “We can’t. We can’t be cowards. No, I’m sorry, Wonshik. We would be. And you’re not. You’d get just as angry soon enough that we didn’t do anything. We’d be running all over creation trying to escape and the minute something breaks down that we can’t fix, we’d be screwed. I can keep us fed, but I can’t make a new thruster or a new airlock. Not a real one. Neither can you. It’s simple practicality. And you know— you _know_ — that it’s wrong for us to run. That’s…that’s why you’re so angry.”

 

Wonshik’s eyes flashed up, and Jaehwan’s teeth found the inside of his lip. But after a moment, Wonshik merely let out a short, choppy breath. “Fuck you,” he said, quietly.

 

“You know you love me,” Jaehwan replied with a very small smile.

 

“Yeah. But fuck you anyway.” Wonshik did not, precisely, smile back, but his shoulders dropped slightly.

 

“So what happens next?” Taekwoon asked, breaking his reverie as he reached for a sandwich for each hand. “Hakyeon, you said Wongeun’s contact is near here?”

 

“Near-ish. It’s someone he more trusts than doesn’t: a three-star Justice he’s dealt with before. We get their attention, we assume they know what Altamont’s been doing, and we agree to be bait. We tell Altamont to come get their goods, and when they show up, we let them into the computers, and the Judiciary takes them.”

 

“What stops either party from killing us, then?” Wonshik asked. “They’re not going to want to let us just leave. Don’t we know too much?”

 

Hakyeon shook his head. “We point out that everyone knows, now. That cat is well out of the bag— and they let it out themselves. The only hope they have for keeping this remotely quiet is taking their ball and going home.”

 

“And you remind them you have…insurance,” Jaehwan said.

 

“Exactly. We don’t come out of this alive, the whole story goes all over the Universe.”

 

“Not that we’ll care, being dead and all,” Hyuk shrugged.

 

“You’re such a breath of fresh air,” Hongbin rolled his eyes.

 

“I do my best!” Hyuk chirped back.

 

“But we’re the ones who take the ball and go home, of course,” Jaehwan said, nodding towards Amy. “And hope Wongeun’s famous lawyers and all can get that ball declared independent.” 

 

“We need to get a new body for you as soon as we can, then, Amy,” Taekwoon. “Hakyeon, can Wongeun help us there?”

 

“I’m sure he can. He has resources here I don’t even know about.”

 

“You’d get to leave the ship,” Jaehwan said, excitement bubbling up inside him unexpectedly. “You’d get to walk around— touch things and see around corners and stuff.”

 

Amy’s smile was bright, expectant, and the rest of them felt it, a wash of lightness rolling over them all, circumstances notwithstanding. “Yes. I’d enjoy that. I’ve toyed with the idea of putting body cams on all of you just so I can see outside this bay. I would like very much to explore for myself.”

 

“That might not be such a bad idea anyway, you know,” Hakyeon said, thoughtful. 

 

Wonshik’s eyes went slightly wide. “You mean constantly?”

 

Hyuk made a complicated shudder. “No one wants to know what you get up to when you’re alone.”

 

Hakyeon snorted, and made a chopping motion at Hyuk’s neck. “Brat. No. When we’re out. When _Things_ are happening. Amy could keep far better track of us than we could of ourselves.”

 

“I would be happy to do so.”

 

“I don’t want to know what sappy movies Taekwoon is watching or anything,” Jaehwan teased, feeling a weird mixture of dread and relief now that some kind of plan was forming.

 

Taekwoon looked up at him with narrowed eyes, though his comment was directed at Amy. “You’ll want to let the rest of us know, though, if Jyannie is about to blow anything up.”

 

“Augh!” Jaehwan threw up his hands in exasperation. “Are any of you ever gonna—“

 

“No,” came the swift reply. This time, from six voices in unison. 

 

He hid a tiny smile as he sighed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Miraelat, Wongeun’s Panettan assistant, led Wonshik and Jaehwan through the corridor outside their office to a spacious, translucent lift. 

 

“We’re just up two levels,” he explained, pressing his hand to the call panel. The lift arrived almost instantly, and both crew members stepped in eagerly, staring through the back of the car into an atrium that seemed to rise the entire height of the station. It was ringed with balconied hallways, and each was edged in greenery. Full-spectrum lighting made it seem like a sunny day in the middle of space.

 

“It’s beautiful,” Jaehwan breathed.

 

“Useful, too,” Miraelat said, his voice rich with pride. “Much of what you see is edible. Makes us far more self-sufficient than a lot of office stations.”

 

“And gives your life-support systems a hell of a boost,” Wonshik pointed out.

 

“Yup. That, too. Makes us just about revenue neutral on oxygen. And makes us all feel better!”

 

The doors slid open, and the three men turned, Miraelat graciously ushering them ahead. Halfway down another corridor was a wide, grey double door, set alone in the left wall. He took out a passkey, and slid open a panel by the doorframe.

 

“Double-security on this one,” he said as he pressed the passkey to the panel and leaned down for a retinal scan. “This is where we keep the good stuff.”

 

Jaehwan and Wonshik exchanged curious looks, and then the doors opened.

 

“No shit,” Wonshik breathed as he comprehended what was inside.

 

The vast room glittered like the highest-end store either of them had ever seen. Shelves ringed the lofty, dimmed walls, with objects in sleek, dust-free cases that gleamed softly in the shadows. Long rows of pedestals marched away from them in aisles running the length of the room, stretching back into the darkness, each pedestal presenting some strange treasure: jewelry, electronics, antiques, artifacts, sculpture, paintings. Bright white spotlights overhead lit selected treasures, leaving the rest to lurk. The air was heavy with wealth and avarice.

 

Jaehwan was drawn forward, jaw slack. He was fairly sure there’d be some kind of order to all of the objects, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. And the items themselves were too distracting: a heavy ring on a blue velvet pillow gleamed back at him, glowing with cabochon sapphires in white gold. As he stepped to the next pedestal, the light on the ring dimmed, and came up in front of him: a silver sphere the size of his fist, with purple lights racing just under the surface. He’d never seen anything like it before, and couldn't imagine what it was, but oh, it was mesmerizing.

 

“Where does all of this come from?” Wonshik asked, his eyes wide.

 

“Collateral, some of it,” Miraelat said, sounding ever so slightly smug. “Some of it payment. We deal with a lot of different societies, and not all of them use Common Currency. So. We get these.”

 

“It’s amazing,” Jaehwan said. “I could stay here for weeks and not see everything.” He sighed ruefully. “However.”

 

Their guide grinned. “However,” he agreed. “This way.”

 

He led the two of them down one aisle, lights flickering over incredible treasures as they passed, until Jaehwan finally had to force himself to stare at the floor so he wouldn’t be so tempted to stop again and again to look, or touch, or possibly drool. He very nearly crashed into Miraelat’s back as the Panettan slowed to make a sharp left, leading across the aisles to a door in the wall. Another passkey and retinal scan, and the door slid open. This time, the lights came on in full automatically. Wonshik jumped slightly in shock with a bitten-off curse.

 

Sitting in simple steel-frame chairs around the perimeter of the small room were half a dozen people: perfectly still, hands on their laps, staring glassily at nothing. They were mostly humanoid, and of various colours and sizes, but they all had the faintly generic look of brand-new, never-configured ServFigs, fresh out of the box.

 

“The 1205.24?” Jaehwan asked, eyes shining. 

 

“Mmm, technically.” Miraelat grinned. Jaehewan was beginning to think he might be the cheeriest office worker ever. “They have one important distinction, though.”

 

“And what would that be?” Wonshik asked, eyebrow raised.

 

“They’re completely untraceable. No serial numbers anywhere.”

 

Jaehwan exclaimed in satisfaction, high-fiving his crewmate. “You’ve just made our jobs that much easier.”

 

“I thought you said you had a way of filing them all off?” Wonshik smirked.

 

“Yeah, but now I won’t have to.”

 

“Wongeun says take whichever one you want. None of them have any configurations, though it doesn’t matter with this model cos they finally took that idiotic layer limit off.”

 

Jaehwan nodded eagerly, prowling to inspect one body after the other. “I know. It never made any sense to me, except as a way to get you to buy another one eventually. Okay. So. Which one? Any preferences?”

 

Ostensibly, he directed the question to Ravi, but paused. Sure enough, the com on his shoulder vibrated every so subtly: two short buzzes against his collarbone. No preference.

 

“Okay, then. So how about we just go for the tall one? One less thing for me to configure.”

 

Miraelat nodded sharply, and stepped forward, jingling a ring of small, rectangular plastic cards, perhaps the size of his thumb, in one hand. He flipped through them until he found the right one, then began working it off the ring.

 

“So this is just going to be a general maid-of-all-work for you guys?” he asked idly as he twisted the card.

 

Wonshik shrugged smoothly. “We don’t have anyone specifically for defense. If you guys are loading us up before we get out of here, we’re gonna need more hands.”

 

Miraelat shook his head as the card finally came off. “Don’t worry— we’re going to give you the best. Wongeun never promises what he can’t deliver.”

 

“I hope you’re right,” Jaehwan murmured. 

 

Miraelat smiled awkwardly. “I’m sure it’ll be all right. Really. Er, anyway, you want to do the honours?” He held out the small card to Jaehwan, almost like a peace offering.

 

The plastic was cool in his fingers as he took it, turning it over and watching the light fracture off the fine silvered circuits embedded inside. Instinctively, he reached into it every so gently with his senses, but nothing came back: there were no organic elements here. Nothing his magic recognised. Then he stepped up to the ServFig they’d selected: a tall male with sandy hair and flat grey eyes, and waved the card in front of its left pupil. There was a faint musical chime, and the grey eyes blinked. 

 

“Hello,” Jaehwan said. “Will you come with me, please?”

 

The eyes blinked once more, as the android assessed language, and adjusted. “Yes,” it replied, and rose. Standing, it was Jaehwan’s height. 

 

“Let’s get you back to the ship. Maybe pretty you up a bit so you don’t look so generic. How about blond?”

 

There were two immediate and definite buzzes against his skin, and Jaehwan was hard-pressed to keep his expression neutral.

 

Wonshik just shook his head, and they left, the ServFig following obediently, its limbs ever so slightly stiff, its grey eyes utterly blank.

 

 

 

 

It was simplest, in the end, to just replicate all the settings from the holo body they had created  only a few days before. Jaehwan had them all stored inside his PAU, and it took no time at all to call them up and transfer them to the real ServFig. For a moment, two Amys stood staring back at him, and then Wonshik stepped forward, and Jaehwan switched off the holo figure. Wonshik caught the octagonal canister of the link to the ship as it fell from empty air where the holo Amy’s abdomen had been, hefting it in his hand before tossing it lightly away to thump in the grass. In his other hand, he held a similarly-sharped oblong metal piece that was much smaller, ready to be installed.

 

He stared at the new, physically-real Amy for a moment.

 

“I can’t even tell the difference,” he mused. “It’s a little weird.”

 

“How does it feel, Amy?” Jaehwan asked, letting his PAU drop to his side and he came to stand beside Wonshik, marveling at the new Amy.

 

“It feels no different, I sadly must admit. But along those lines, now that this body is a solid reality, I hope to upgrade the touch sensors and physical parameters. I think…I think it would be fascinating to actually feel objects the way humans do.”

 

Jaehwan was excited. “That would be amazing— you have full modification rights. You can do anything you want to this body, now. It’s yours. Full autonomy. No one can touch you without your permission— not me, not the captain, not anyone. So. Here.” He reached into the breast pocket of his skinsuit. “This is yours.”

 

He held out the small plastic card that turned the ServFig on and off. Amy eyed it neutrally, then took it slowly. Jaehwan was surprised to see the red dress was gone, replaced by a standard-issue skinsuit like his own.

 

Amy glanced up at him. “If I am to hold to the cover story that I’m to work your armaments, I should look like a member of the crew, though only until we leave the station,” she said quietly, eyes then back on the card.

 

“You all right?” Wonshik asked.

 

She tilted her head a moment, considering. “I have, as you can imagine, done extensive reading on the history of AIs in your society. There have been very few with any large amounts of autonomy. Fewer still with total autonomy, and all of them came to very bad, very swift ends. And those were AIs created by unscrupulous people with unfortunate agendas. I will be the first of my kind: though we must assume I was initially created with some end goal in mind, I have no such goal now. I am, indeed, a fully autonomous being.” She smiled up at them, wryly. “It’s an interesting burden to bear.”

 

Jaehwan’s heart thumped as the gravitas of the moment sank in. 

 

“You’re more than up to it, Amy,” he said.

 

She nodded slowly, thoughtfully, and closed her fist around the card, tucking it into her own breast pocket. 

 

“Yes,” she said quietly, “I believe that I am.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amy was quiet a moment, considering. “I have centuries of human media and psychological studies and history in my brain, but it occurs to me that there is an infinite amount more for me to learn. Thank you, Jaehwan.”
> 
>  
> 
> He smiled wryly, feeling his cheeks warm. “We’re like some weird kind of infinite onion or something, humans. Layer after layer. I think half the time even we don’t understand why we do what we do or feel the way we feel.”

The new guns gleamed against the curve of the ship’s hull through the port. Amy stood beside Hakyeon, rubbing her hands clean with a cloth. Jaehwan looked back and forth between the two of them and the additions to the ship with a sinking feeling. None of this insane, convoluted conflict had seemed real, before. Now, when he looked through the ship’s canopy to the stars beyond, it was too close. Way, way too close.

 

His stomach had been in knots since they’d cruised out through the protective field of the loading bay. There’d been a moment of levity as Hongbin gaped in slack-jawed amazement, his head switchbacking between the suddenly empty space behind them where the station had just loomed, and the serenely empty space his controls displayed. But it wasn’t every day an entire space station utterly disappeared on him, so Jaehwan felt, most graciously, he could be forgiven. The rest of them had appreciated the laugh, if Hongbin had not.

 

He didn’t feel like laughing now. Not at all. They had only fifteen hours’ travel time to their rendezvous with Wongeun’s contact, but time was doing that horrible dance of going too fast and crawling too slowly. He debated going back to his lab to work on some longstanding experiments, but he was too distracted, which was a sure recipe for a disastrous occurrence, and the last thing he needed was, well. Something else everyone would tease him about for years. Still, he could always spend the time finally reorganizing the last closet on the left, which had spent the last two months looking as if an asteroid had hit it. And Koyangi was there.

 

As he made his way through the corridors, even in the comfort and familiarity of his lab, it felt, in some awkward, horrible way, as if he were the ship. As if he were waiting every second to feel something striking his skin as it struck the thin metal shell of _The Baegilmong_. He was jumpy, over-wound. Angry. 

 

Afraid.

 

The tips of his fingers felt cold as he sorted bottles and flasks out onto his worktable: what to keep, what to move, what to throw into the chute. Somewhere in his experiments, shouldn’t there be something useful for keeping them safe? For removing the target painted on them all, as if he were removing a bad spell? Yes, Amy was her own being now— she was smarter than he was, surely, and braver, but he’d had a hand in bringing her into the life she now had, and he felt responsible. Shouldn’t he also be responsible for her safety? Her existence thus far could still be measured in days. To have to fight for her life just as it was starting seemed bitterly unfair. _She’s just beginning to explore existence— she shouldn’t have to deal with all of this right out of the literal box_ , he snorted to himself unhappily.

 

Koyangi sighed, adjusting her coils around his neck in her sleep. He stroked her scales reflexively. Protectively. That had always been a driving force in his life: protecting others. Providing for them. How many times had his father looked at him and brusquely, if affectionately, joked that his son’s magic— being able to feed people— was divinely chosen? Jaehwan’s anger and his fear wouldn’t help anyone, he knew, but he also knew they were inevitable. They came from his guilt. He knew that, too. His illogical guilt at putting Amy in such a situation. And his fear— his overpowering terror— was that he wouldn’t be able to help her protect herself.

 

As if thinking of her had been a summons, there was a chime at the door, heralding the physical embodiment of their new shipmate. Jaehwan smiled, if a bit tiredly.

 

She eyed the clutter on his worktable as she entered. “You’re worrying.”

 

“Well-spotted,” he sighed, eying the mess. “But at least it means I can get all this trivial stuff done around here. It distracts me.”

 

“That’s likely not the worst use of nervous energy,” Amy nodded.

 

Jaehwan shrugged, shoving a few bottles over to the discard pile. “Nervous. Terrified. You know, take your pick.”

 

“May I ask of what you might be terrified?”

 

He looked up in confusion, a cracked blue plastic test tube that should have gone out weeks ago dangling from his fingers. “I…sort of…would think that’s obvious?” he said, slightly nonplussed, caught between wondering if he’d have to explain just himself, or all of humanity.

 

“You are worried about the ship and your safety?”

 

He took a deep breath, nightmare scenarios fluttering through his brain almost painfully. It was only a small comfort to know talking about them couldn’t hurt her feelings or offend her. “Well, I mean, yeah, but…Amy, I’m worried they’re essentially going to kill you.”

 

Her expression was one of deep interest, and again, Jaehwan found himself struck by how rapidly she was evolving her sudden physicality, how quickly she was becoming more and more human.

 

“And yet you’ve only known me a matter of days,” she said slowly, thoughtfully, echoing his earlier thoughts. “I’ve only _existed_ a matter of days.”

 

Jaehwan folded slowly onto one of the work stools beside him, groping for words. It wasn’t like explaining things to a child— she was vastly intelligent, with the stored knowledge of the Universe at her newly-configured fingertips. But explaining some things would have been easier to a child, a human raised as he had been, with common touchstones. He felt a bit adrift.

 

“Some people…make connections quickly, and some people don’t. It’s neither good nor bad; it just is. Some people want to maintain relationships, some prefer to be alone. All of us here…we’re a funny mix. In our own ways, we’re very…hm. We’re…very sociable loners. And I don’t know if it’s because you took after all of us from the first, or if it’s a matter of your coding, or…or anything, but you get along with us. You fit in, here. We’re like a family, and you…I guess you’re part of that, now. We like you. You’re important. You’re our crew. So it doesn’t matter how long I’ve known you— you’ve just, I guess, slotted into that ‘family’ spot and…that’s it,” he trailed off lamely, gesturing with empty hands.

 

Amy was quiet a moment, considering. “I have centuries of human media and psychological studies and history in my brain, but it occurs to me that there is an infinite amount more for me to learn. Thank you, Jaehwan.”

 

He smiled wryly, feeling his cheeks warm. “We’re like some weird kind of infinite onion or something, humans. Layer after layer. I think half the time even we don’t understand why we do what we do or feel the way we feel. Seriously, if you ever want a really good lesson on, say, embarrassment? Ask Wonshik questions about emotions. He’ll tie himself in knots.”

 

“Does he not understand emotions?”

 

“Oh, no, he does. Really. And he feels a lot. He just trips all over himself trying to pretend he doesn’t. It’s kind of adorable.”

 

“So this advice falls under your ‘special kind of love,’ I take it?”

 

Jaehwan grinned, “That’s a reasonable assumption. We’re a family, but we’re a _special_ family.”

 

Amy grinned back. “Duly noted. So. Do you require any assistance with your organising? Until we finish the reconfiguring tests on the power cell routing, I am at a bit of a loose end, here.”

 

“Nah,” he shrugged, sweeping the doomed vials and bottles into the chute at the end of his worktable. “I needed to clear out that stuff for ages, and now it’s done. That is one benefit to negative emotions, you’ll find. Procrastination. Expending of nervous energy. Fun stuff like that.”

 

“Do all humans rearrange their closets when they’re tense?” Though the question was sincere, Jaehwan could hear the humour in her tone.

 

“I’m certainly not alone, no,” he chuckled. “Though sometimes, if I’m stressed, I’ll go to the holo and make sure we have piles of snacks for everyone.”

 

“That is an exceedingly useful ability. I must admit that it fascinates me, as magic is an ability I will never have. Is it rude of me to ask what it feels like to make a holographic representation of food actually nutritionally viable?”

 

“Oh. Er…no. Not rude. I mean, at least not to me, though now you mention it, most people with  more pronounced magical abilities don’t talk about them a lot with people who don’t have them. Abilities, that is. I mean, almost everyone has _some_ potential, even if it’s just picking up on if an object’s been charmed or not, or being able to implement a minor spell they’ve bought at a shop. For me…hm.” He cocked his head, sorting through words.

 

“It’s…well, physically, it’s a sort of…rush. I have something in front of me, something I’ve built holographically, like a sandwich or a whole dinner or a piece of fruit, a flower, whatever, and I…look…inside it? Not with my eyes, but with— ah, this is weird. I look with my brain, with my skin, with my senses, and I can see, or feel, where it’s…hollow. Where it’s missing something. I had a teacher once who called it ‘divested of practical use.’ So I invest it. I touch whatever it is, and I focus on filling up those empty spaces. And if you’re going to ask me what I fill them with—“

 

“I was, indeed.”

 

“I’m afraid I can’t even tell you,” he laughed. “It doesn’t really seem to drain me, though sometimes, on really big jobs, channeling whatever energy I do can be tiring. It’s like being a conduit for something. I feel it…sort of at the base of my skull, like the feeling you get when someone’s watching you? Oh— right, sorry— it’s a feeling we get. A kind of prickling, or a weight. And it sort of gathers there, and when I touch the holo object, it just— it’s a rush, right down my arms and through my fingers. It’s…cold. Well, more cool. And sort of…sparkly.” Jaehwan shrugged, laughing again. “It really is hard to explain. But it goes on until whatever I’m touching just feels full. And then it’s done.”

 

Amy was clearly fascinated. “Feels full?”

 

“Mmhm. It’s not an exact science. It used to drive my teachers crazy that I couldn’t get more precise about it. No one could quantify my power if they couldn’t measure it.”

 

“How, then, did you learn your limits?”

 

“Well,” Jaehwan gestured around at his lab,”I’ve been here a while. I’ve done experiments on my own magic while I’m not doing something for a job. Some of them turn out very well. Some of them, not so much.”

 

“May I ask…?”

 

“Everyone wants to know if I can make living things. No, I can’t. I have a feeling there’s some greater power that I would need to tap into, but I’m not sure humans can channel anything that big. I….” He broke off, feeling his face start to warm as his words stumbled short.

 

“I apologise if I have overstepped, here,” Amy said, frowning.

 

“No, it’s no that. It’s…it sounds strange, and I wish sometimes I wish I were still in contact with some of my old teachers. It’s a philosophical conversation I’d love to have with some of them. It’s just…sometimes, I get the sense that there’s something else out there, beyond my powers to call down. I don’t know what it is: a wall at the edge of my abilities, or the start of something bigger, something beyond me. And I don’t know what I would do with it if there were something there. I don’t know. Like I said, I can’t do life, so what else is it? Transmutation of some kind? Something I haven’t even, _can’t_ even comprehend?” Jaehwan found himself leaning forward, hands clenched on the smooth surface of the worktable. Sheepishly, he sank back, ruffling his hands through his hair and letting out a short laugh. “Do I, perhaps, have the potential to turn a ham sandwich into a Colaxian triple parfait? We may never know!”

 

Amy smiled back, but grew thoughtful again. “Have you experimented with more basic life forms, perhaps? And I apologies if I’m offering ideas you must surely have considered already.”

 

“No, no, it’s okay. I don’t mind.” Jaehwan flicked open a screen, and called up a case file. “I have, indeed. Here— see that? That’s a sprig of plain old basil. It was on Hakyeon’s dinner one night. I just started staring at it, and I grabbed it right off his plate. Everyone laughed at me— this was years ago. But I grabbed it and brought it back here to the lab and shoved it in your basic growth serum. I mean, I’d made it real, and my scans showed it was all but indistinguishable from traditionally-grown herbs. But it didn’t grow. Nothing. Stayed green a few days, then wilted and died. I’ve done other experiments—“ he flicked through more files, images flashing across his screen, “— and sometimes, I’ve found food I’ve created will break down and produce bacteria, but I haven’t yet been successful in determining the origin of that bacteria. Is it me, or is it a molecular process created by the holo itself? When I make kefir, are the cultures live because I’ve made them live, or because I’ve switched on what was already latent in the construct?”

 

Amy peered closely at the images and notes on the screen, absorbed. “This is fascinating. If you’re amenable, I would love to go over these with you. If the opportunity allows, of course.”

 

“You mean if we don’t all get blown up, and when I’m stressed again?”

 

“I believe that we will not all get blown up as much as I believe you will all experience stress again: that is, quite firmly.”

 

Jaehwan had to laugh outright at that. How well she’d come to know them all.

 

“I can honestly say I’d appreciate the help. Thank you. Though I don’t know: everyone else has their own very human ways of dealing with stress.”

 

“Oh? How do they handle it?”

 

“Everyone’s different. Hakyeon? He makes candles when he needs to relax. He could call up any kind of candle he wanted in any shape, any fragrance, anything. But he loves to mix all the ingredients, pour the wax, all of it. Says he finds it meditative. Wonshik, on the other hand? Throws himself into his music, or works out. Or heads to the holo, and I don’t want to know what he does there. Taekwoon watches sappy movies where everyone dies.”

 

“How is that relaxing?”

 

“I cannot even begin to fathom, honestly. Um. Sanghyuk and Hongbin try to kill each other in games. The bloodier the better.”

 

“You don’t appreciate that approach?”

 

“Nope. The Universe is bloody enough for me, already. Especially now.” He couldn’t help his hand involuntarily twitching towards his now-healed cheek, and he shook his head to dispel the ghost of pain that flickered through his skin. “Anyway. Humans have always had weird rituals before stressful situations. We’re weird creatures.”

 

“I have noticed; though, of course, I have very little basis for comparison.” 

 

Jaehwan chuckled, kicking his foot idly against the support of his stool. “I hope one day you get to meet other species. I’ve heard Galopticans indulge in mass orgies before battle. And Quirels contemplate unsolved mathematical equations. Gorkins exchange bodies— no idea how that works, but it seems to do it for them.”

 

“There are so many things humans share with other species, and so many ways in which there is no overlap whatsoever. Just as there are rituals that seem to make logical sense, and some I cannot fathom. It makes me wonder.”

 

“Wonder what, specifically?”

 

“What I am.”

 

Jaehwan was taken slightly aback. “What you are as in…?”

 

Amy frowned, standing very still a moment. Jaehwan could almost see the thoughts flicker through her head as she chose her words.

 

“I am, in appearance, human. This shell is humanoid. But as we know, whatever the essence of me is or may become, I am not human. I may assimilate every last aspect of your culture and knowledge and traditions, but will that ever make me human? Is that even possible? And is it even something for which I should aspire? There is nothing quite like me anywhere else in the Universe. Should I not embrace that and simply be one of a kind? Or should I strive to be something I am not? And if I strive for anything, should it be humanity? Perhaps, despite my outward appearance, I am more similar, internally, to a Quirel, or a Schribe, or an Ataxan. And how does one choose? Must one choose at all?

 

Jaehwan gulped, feeling quite out of his depth. “That is…man. That is not something I can remotely speak to, I’m afraid. I don’t even know where to tell you to go with that. I’ve never had to question my own species. Many other things, but not that.”

 

Amy shook her head, here expression now rueful. “I don’t believe there is anyone who can quite relate. But I appreciate your impulse to empathise.”

 

“I guess it’s just my nature,” Jaehwan said quietly.

 

Amy lifted an eyebrow. “I wonder if I have a nature at all?”

 

Words abandoned Jaehwan in a puff of intellectual smoke, and he stared, mouth slightly agape, trying to reach for language that wasn’t there, concepts he couldn’t wholly wrap his mind around, when an explosion of light and noise went off, and he jumped, knocking his stool to the ground with a clash.

 

It was the proximity siren and its accompanying lights. Fear rose up in a great wave through Jaehwan’s body, roiling his stomach and choking him even as his body froze. He felt the muscle stimulators in his skinsuit kick in, and its heat sensors send warmth across his suddenly-cold skin, but he still had to consciously wrench himself out of immobility and follow as Amy all but vanished, a blur of colour through the door even as he heard her voice over the ship’s intercom, everywhere.

 

He pelted for the bridge, not even bothering to uncoil a shrieking and fluttering Koyangi, slamming his hand down over his com button.

 

“—coming in fast out of nowhere, dammit,” Hongbin was almost yelling, his voice high and tight with tension.

 

“Jaehwan, Taekwoon: on the bridge— ah, Taekwoon, buckle in— Jaehwan?” Hakyeon’s voice was more controlled, but no less tense. Jaehwan could hear Taekwoon’s voice, too, now, speaking quickly in the background.

 

“Almost there, Captain!” Jaehwan snapped back, swarming up the stairs three at a time.

 

Amy’s voice surrounded him. “Calabrian pirates, heavily armed. They have a tractor beam that is not strong enough to tow us in, but is strong enough to slow us down. Should they latch on, their armaments have a 27% chance of piercing our shields if they can fire steadily and quickly enough.”

 

Jaehwan burst onto the bridge, eyes wide. Hakyeon, Taekwoon, and Hongbin were at their posts— fully strapped in— and Amy stood against one wall, her eyes blank. For a horrified second, Jaehwan thought she had somehow been injured— broken?— until he realised she had fully gone back into the ship through her link. 

 

“I’m here, Captain,” he called out, dragging his attention back. The other ship was looming in the viewscreen, barreling towards them, sleek and grim and heavy with guns.

 

“Jaehwan, I need you in the gun seat. Get them in your sights but hold your fire.” Hakyeon did not turn his eyes from the screen. Jaehwan bit back his instinctive protest— he’d never even so much as looked at the new defense’s controls, much less tried to operate them. But orders were orders.

 

He slid into the curved, padded shell of the brand new seat, feeling it mold to his body as the safety straps fastened themselves. The display came up in front of his face, glowing onto his skin as it curved around his head immersively. He slid his hands into the control field, and tried to ignore the way his fingers trembled.

 

“Captain, would you like me to—“ Amy began.

 

“No,” Hakyeon cut her off, “I just need to to figure out how the new shielding failed, and how to get it back up.”

 

“I’ve isolated the problem, Captain,” she replied.

 

“Good. Get them ready to go back up, but do not deploy yet.”

 

“They’ll be in firing range in sixteen seconds, Captain,” Hongbin called urgently.

 

“Tell me you have a plan,” Taekwoon muttered, none-too-quietly, his own hands locked into his control field, his eyes fixed narrowly on the screen. 

 

Hakyeon ignored him. “Wonshik, Sanghyuk, secure yourselves. Taekwoon, begin the sequence for a jump to light speed but do not engage. Amy, raise the shielding again on my mark. Jaehwan, they open fire on us, you fire right back.” As he spoke, Hakyeon brought the ship in a sharp turn, increasing speed, but not taking any further evasive maneuvers.

 

“Eight seconds, Captain!”

 

“Taekwoon— start the jump now. Amy, the second the thrusters hit peak glow, _before_ we jump, bring up the shields.”

 

The increasing wash of sound of the massive engines filled the cockpit just as Jaehwan realised the ship chasing them was powering up its cannons. He felt hollow, a thin shell— the sounds of his ship and his crew washing through him, echoing and meaningless, his skin so cold his suit could do nothing. All he could see was the green ring of light around the cannons pursuing them, aimed right at them, aimed by someone whose face he couldn’t see. The light built in intensity, charging up— any second, it would blast hell on them.

 

“Two seconds!” Hongbin barked.

 

“Engines at full glow,” Taekwoon shot back as the familiar pre-jump pressure peaked.

 

“Amy! Shields!”

 

“Shields up, Captain.”

 

Hakyeon wrenched the ship into a dive so suddenly Jaehwan felt his skull bounce against his headrest and Koyangi shrieked, talons scrabbling.

 

“Taekwoon, cut the engines!”

 

“Cut the— yes, sir. Engines cut, sir.”

 

Jaehwan pushed himself up out of his seat in shock, just in time to see the belly of the pirate ship flash past, its own engines hitting their peaks as the ship jumped to lightspeed, chasing a trail that did not exist.

 

The sudden silence was deafening. 

 

Jaehwan slid back into his seat, and gave in to full-body tremors.

 

 

 

 

 

He didn’t know how long it took him to realise that Hakyeon was standing there quietly, looking at him, one hip against the console and arms crossed, his large, dark eyes calm and unreadable while he waited for Jaehwan to come back to himself.

 

The trembling had stopped. Koyangi had buried her head between the headrest and the back of his neck, a silent comfort even in her own fear. He wasn’t quite ready to uncurl his hands from the armrests. But perhaps he could trust his voice. Maybe.

 

He opened his mouth, and nothing came out.

 

Hakyeon spoke quietly. “Are you all right?”

 

Jaehwan swallowed. Tried again. “I’m not sure.”

 

The captain’s eyes were thoughtful. “Will you be?”

 

“Hakyeon, I….” Jaehwan found himself staring at his own hands, finally raising them, turning them over in in his lap. Staring. “Hakyeon, I’m not a violent person. I’ve never killed anyone. I’ve never…I’ve never in my life even come close.”

 

“You still haven’t,” 

 

“Oh, yes I have— _that_ was close,” Jaehwan snapped, feeling his heart lurch. He took a breath, held it a moment, let it out slowly. “Sorry.”

 

Hakyeon shook his head mildly. “Don’t apologise. I know. I’m afraid I can’t apologise to you, though. I needed you to be here.”

 

Jaehwan didn’t trust himself to speak. Or even to look up. His hands moved of their own volition again, stroking cool blue scales.

 

After a moment, Hakyeon spoke again. “If it’s any consolation, I put you here knowing you would more than likely not have to fire.”

 

At this, Jaehwan did look up. Hakyeon met his gaze evenly, a sort of sympathy curving his mouth a bit to one side.

 

“This isn’t what you signed up for. I know. But everything is different right now. And if we want to get through this, we’re all going to have to do things we didn’t sign up for. That’s just how it’s going to be for a while. For that, I’m sorry. I also know absolutely you can do what you need to do. What I need you to do.”

 

Jaehwan felt no such certainty, trying to find it in his captain’s face. “How do you know?”

 

Hakyeon’s drew himself up, pushing off from the console, his eyes shuttering. “Because,” he shrugged matter-of-factly as he turned to move away, “I’m not giving you a choice.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. It's been a while. I'm cancer-free, which is awesome, but surgical recovery's taking forever. I think what delayed me more, though, is pretty obvious if you've read my first work. 
> 
> I found out Jjong was dead at 6.30am. I found out my surgery had been fully successful and I was cured around 10pm. I was still in the hospital. It was one of the most surreal, horrific, and exhilarating days of my life. I've never had such an all-encompassing high and low at the same time. I don't recommend it.
> 
> If you ever feel like you can't go on, that things will never get better, you're a burden to everyone, and the world would be better off without you, let me tell you: you're wrong. Depression is a hideous liar, and it turns your brain into what literature professors call an "unreliable narrator." It skews and filters everything you see, hear, and think to support a narrative that simply isn't true. You DO matter. You ARE important. There IS help. 
> 
> I swear this to you: I'm living proof you can have a perfectly fine, frequently-G-d-damned-awesome life even with chronic depression. Meds and therapy have worked for me, and there are all kinds of solutions that might work for you. If the first one you try doesn't work, try another. Keep trying until you find the one that works. You need a complete stranger to talk to, I'm here.
> 
> You are so much stronger than you think you are. I promise.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “They lied to us. They put us in danger. They injured my crew. I am a businessman, Justice, but I am also human. They hurt us. I would like to hurt them back. And as I can’t do that on my own with any degree of safety, I am, let’s say, suggesting a mutually beneficial method of revenge.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie: it's been rough, trying to sit down and write while I'm still processing losing Jjong. It also doesn't help that I'm scheduling myself naps every day cos I still get tired really easily, and when I sit up too long, I feel like I have a couple thousand angry gnomes poking me in the abdomen with lit torches. Bastards. But we're almost there with this one. So, so close. I'll try not to leave you hanging so long again!

None of them had slept well.

 

Jaehwan looked around the conference room, reading the subtle signs in his shipmate’s faces and postures. Hongbin’s eyes were shadowed. Taekwoon’s face was especially blank. Sanghyuk was fidgeting— scraping at his cuticles and continually having to stop his leg from bouncing against the bottom of the table. Wonshik’s shoulders were pulled in in just that way he got when he was feeling defensive. Jaehwan was sure he himself likely looked like he should have come in astride a pale horse.

 

Hakyeon, however.

 

He sat at the head of the table, eyes clear and face impassive. He looked as if nothing had ever troubled him in all his life. As if nothing could. His hands were folded lightly on the polished surface before him, quite still. And his expression was one of polite interest as, down the length of the table, he regarded their visitor, who stared back silently, considering.

 

She was older than any of them. Possibly older than several of them put together. But age seemed only to deepen her: she was formidable, imposing. Human, or mostly so. Pale hair that had, perhaps, once been red, or strawberry, now pale, pulled back tightly, sleekly, at the base of a neck nearly as long as Hakyeon’s own, atop a ramrod straight spine. Her dark blue Justiciar’s uniform was spotless, crisp, and imposing, with enough small gold buttons along one shoulder to denote here was someone who got done whatever needed to be done, no matter what obstacles were in her way. Jaehwan wondered if that’s what she considered all of them, and how she would clear them from her path.

 

“I could, of course, simply take your ship,” she said, eyeing Hakyeon coolly.

 

“No, you couldn’t,” he replied, his tone matched in temperature. “We’re not under suspicion of any crime, nor is it wartime. You would need a warrant. I am familiar with maritime law, Justice An.”

 

“You have openly admitted to having stolen goods on the ship.”

 

“We have not. We have told you one of our clients, unbeknownst to us, contracted us to ship goods we later discovered to be illegal. We are simply reporting this to the proper authorities.”

 

She raised an eyebrow. “And?”

 

He smiled slightly. “And offering our assistance in your pursuit of justice.”

 

“As you’ve said.” She was silent again for a long moment. “What I fail to fully grasp, here, Captain, is what benefit there is in this scheme to you. You could simply turn this item over to us, and we would take care of Altamont for you. There would be considerably less danger to yourselves.”

 

“And you would have no evidence Altamont had broken the law. And they would likely continue to come after us, thinking us unprotected.”

 

“Mm.” She nodded, non-committal.

 

“They lied to us. They put us in danger. They injured my crew. I am a businessman, Justice, but I am also human. They hurt us. I would like to hurt them back. And as I can’t do that on my own with any degree of safety, I am, let’s say, suggesting a mutually beneficial method of revenge.”

 

Her mouth twisted slightly, and she snorted. Jaehwan was accustomed, now, to her long silences, and he knew she used them as tools to make people uncomfortable, make them speak, desperate to fill the silence. He took a deep breath, wishing he could reach out to Amy, but the crew had decided collectively the risk of using their in-ears and speaking subvocally was simply too great. Though the Justice had agreed to come into the conference room alone, her guards and assistant attorneys sat just outside the open door, and there was little doubt they carried hidden tech to keep anyone from spying on them. They couldn’t know the ship itself was the spy.

 

“So your plan, Captain, is to allow these people you admit are a danger to you to come on board, amongst your crew, and to give them unfettered access to your computers. Since they won’t know we’re here, how exactly do you propose to keep them from simply killing all of you and destroying this ship? Not to mention they will undoubtedly assume— correctly, might I add— it’s some kind of a trap.”

 

Hakyeon nodded. “As we’ve explained to them before, I have certain failsafes in place. If we suddenly go missing, every last byte of incriminating evidence will be disseminated throughout the galaxy. Their ultimate purpose in this fiasco is to keep quiet what was on their shipment. So.” He gestured one long-fingered hand expressively.

 

“And what guarantee can you give them that you won’t simply tell the galaxy anyway after they leave?”

 

Hyuk, whose eyes had been flicking back and forth from one end of the table to the other as the conversation progressed, snorted loudly, though he had the grace to blush slightly. “We don’t want to die.”

 

Hakyeon smirked. “I’m not above using our perfectly understandable fear as evidence of our willingness to cooperate.”

 

“And you don’t think they’ll destroy you simply because you know what they have done?”

 

Jaehwan had to admire his captain all over again as he smoothly lied to the Justice. “We _don’t_ know what they have done. We know the rumours— that they’re developing some kind of AI. Apparently, everyone knows. But we don’t know what they put on our ship, or how. We just know there is something intertwined with the systems of _The Baegilmong_ that we cannot get out. We do not know what it is, we do not know what kind of threat it constitutes, and we don’t know how to get rid of it. I’m going to assume it’s a part of their program, and I am not thrilled with being part of their beta testing. Something is wrong with their work somewhere, and it isn’t stable. I have to assume it’s dangerous. I want it gone. I want them to answer for endangering— and attacking— my crew. So. Here we are.”

 

Jaehwan cast a glance out through the open door, where he could see her entourage: three women, two men, and one gender-fluid. Though they sat fairly still, reviewing documents on their workpads or PAUs, he was fairly certain they were subtly probing the ship as much as they could, trying to find out what was there. He trusted Amy to be at least three steps ahead of them: leaving traces of something, but not anything they could identify.

 

“I would be remiss, Captain, if I didn’t warn you that I think you’re getting in over your head, here,” the Justice said, her eyes slightly narrowed. “But if you feel you’ve looked at every contingency, then I must also applaud your courage, and that of your crew.” Her eyes lingered a moment on all of them, and Jaehwan felt his cheeks warm. “Where are you going to propose this interaction with Altamont takes place?”

 

Jaehwan could sense Hakyeon’s satisfaction, though he doubted their visitors could. “There is an abandoned station on Kerikas, approximately two days from here. Very few people know about it, and the region itself is remote and unpopulated. I will suggest to them that they meet us there.”

 

The Justice raised an eyebrow. “Kerikas.”

 

Hakyeon smiled serenely. “Kerikas.”

 

“I am impressed, Captain,” she said quietly. Hakyeon merely inclined his head slightly, Jaehwan noted he wasn’t the only one at the table looking confused.

 

Justice An rose to her feet, a shuffling echoing in the hall as her retinue rose, as well.

 

“Two days, at Keritas. I’ll contact you with the final arrangements before the end of the day.”

 

Hakyeon rose, the rest of the crew following suit raggedly, still displaying various degrees of bafflement. Hakyeon gave a pointed look to Sanghyuk, who shook himself slightly.

 

“Uh, yeah, let me…I’ll see you out, Justice An, if you’ll follow me.”

 

And with one last, shrewd look at Hakyeon, their guest departed.

 

The captain watched them go, then let out a long sigh.

 

“Lounge. I need a drink.”

 

 

 

 

 

They trailed after him like confused ducklings, haphazardly, Hyuk joining them as they regrouped in their more comfortable surroundings. Amy was already there, her hair a short bob, dressed in a skinsuit.

 

Hongbin called up a drink for Hakyeon, and handed it to him. “Kerikas?”

 

The captain settled into a chair with a sigh, accepting the drink with a grateful look. “Mmhm.”

 

“The only thing I know about that place is the whole planet is basically savannah and a couple of oceans, and they’ve got one half-assed city somewhere in the northern hemisphere. Why the hell did you pick there?”

 

Hakyeon waved graciously towards Amy with his glass.

 

She turned to the rest of them. “There have long been rumours that the ‘abandoned’ military base on Kerikas is not completely abandoned. There have, additionally, been some encrypted messages sent from the planet that have not come from its sole city, Perilas.”

 

“The military is still using it?” Wonshik asked.

 

Hakyeon nodded. “We must assume, although on a limited basis.”

 

“Then won’t Altamont know?”

 

“This is information Wongeun gave me. No one else knows.”

 

“Well, except Justice An,” Jaehwan mused. “She certainly seemed to know.”

 

“Indeed. Which is why I think she went for it.” Hakyeon sipped, meditatively. “We will be safer there than anywhere else in the region. Though not completely safe. And if any of you want to wait this out in Perilas, I am fine with that. More than fine— I would encourage it.”

 

Jaehwan shook his head emphatically, moving before he was conscious of it. “No. No, this is my home, and…I…I’m angry. I owe them. I want to make sure this happens. I want to be there for it.”

 

Taekwoon slid down in his seat, working his shoulders deeper into the cushions. “You don’t need your attention split between the ship and a city on the other side of the planet.”

 

Wonshik, Hyuk, and Hongbin nodded absently, not giving the matter further thought. Amy merely regarded the captain evenly. Hakyeon shrugged, knowing when to leave off.

 

Wonshik tilted his head back, thunking it against the back of his seat. “I’m gonna have to do some heavy smoke and mirrors stuff to the computers. Make it look like something’s there. Amy, I’m gonna ask your help. Actually,” he laughed once, wryly, “I’m probably just gonna ask you what to do and follow directions.”

 

“I have some ideas,” she replied. “I have been studying the computers even more in-depth since the the reconfiguring tests on the power cell routing caused the shields to power down. I believe it’ll be possible to create some impressive false trails.”

 

“But you’ll be safely out of the system by then, right?” Jaehwan’s even flicked up nervously towards her.

 

“Yes. I will not be on the ship at all, either physically or electronically, though I will, of course, be monitoring the situation remotely.”

 

“We talked about body cams, once, didn’t we?” Hongbin asked, looking around at them all. “We could do that?”

 

“I don’t wanna have to see what Wonshik gets up to alone in his quarters,” Sanghyuk snickered, shaking his head firmly.

 

“I will defenestrate you,” Wonshik replied absently, not even bothering to lift his head.

 

“Now, now, children,” Hakyeon murmured. “We all have a long few days ahead of us. Time for bed.”

 

Hongbin rolled his eyes. “You’re not my real dad!” he mock-whined, pushing up out of his chair.

 

Taekwoon rose as well, stretching his long limbs. “What, are you saying I’m not your real brother, then?”

 

“My real brother wouldn’t watch those G-d awful holos— ah!” He broke off with a laugh, dashing out the door with Taekwoon in determined pursuit.

 

Amy watched them go, her expression curious. But then, meeting Jaehwan’s gaze, she nodded.

 

“A strange kind of love, indeed.”

 

 

 

 

 

The planet glowed beneath them: its surface a subtly mottled green shading into gold and back again, overlaid with a fine net of azure veins that glittered as the ship passed over them. Jaehwan was struck by how beautiful it was. How empty and peaceful. Ironic.

 

Sanghyuk nudged him with a shoulder. “As good a place as any to risk our lives and destroy a major corporation, right?”

 

Jaehwan hoped his laugh didn’t sound as nervous as he felt, but had to admit it probably did.

 

“If we’re lucky,” Taekwoon murmured, not taking his eyes off the planet as his hands moved though his control field.

 

“We’re just doing our civic duty, hyung,” Hongbin said airily, sitting back from his own console with a few last taps. The faint, dark smears under his eyes gave the lie to his tone. Wonshik, standing beside the navigation console, gave him a comforting pat on the arm, his own eyes slightly bleary as he stared at the planet below. Once again, none of them had slept very well.

 

The savannah stretched on placidly, unexceptionally, with occasional dark scatters of herding beasts grazing across it. A low, pixellated cloud of enormous white birds swirled away, throwing blue shadows beneath them. Their engines were too quiet and their altitude too high to disturb them.

 

Jaehwan shook his head and made a frustrated noise. It was too much something, but he didn’t know what.

 

Hakyeon gave a wry snort. “Mm. I agree.”

 

“It’s just disconcerting, knowing what’s down there somewhere. Or just what we’re here for. I don’t know. It’s something— I can feel it.”

 

“Your intuition. S’why I hired you,” Hakyeon murmured, his eyes not leaving the landscape.

 

“I thought it was because he keeps us so well-fed,” Taekwoon interjected mildly, shooting Jaehwan a quick smile to dispel any snark.

 

“We have a very good kitchen on this ship, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

 

“Yeah, but you hate to cook,” Sanghyuk snickered.

 

“I do not hate to cook, you little heathen,” Hakyeon shot back smoothly, “And I’m about to have you scout our location from outside the ship.”

 

“If he’s navigating I’m taking a nap,” Hongbin said brightly, half-rising from his seat.

 

“Sit down,” Hakyeon returned over his shoulder, not even looking. Hongbin subsided with the brief flash of a sharp grin.

 

Jaehwan’s head dropped to his chest to hide his own, more uneasy smile. He didn’t mind the way his shipmates bickered. It felt like family, like home. He trusted them all to be there if things went south. Hongbin and Sanghyuk, with their hours in holo games, could likely hit a leaf out of a tree at fifty meters. Wonshik inadvertently played dumb sometimes, yes, but it was only because his mind was elsewhere, weaving complex webs of connections at light speed, seeing things the rest of them couldn’t. Taekwoon, for all his half-moody, half-goofy mood swings, was rock-solidly dependable in times of stress. And Hakyeon…. Jaehwan looked up furtively at their captain, who was surveying the terrain with a cool, serene expression, as if nothing could possibly be wrong. Hakyeon was turning out to be full of surprises, wasn’t he? There were darker shades inside him than Jaehwan had ever seen, even after years on the ship. He was glad of it now, with a practically cartoon-evil enemy looming over them, but how was he going to look at his captain later, when they were through all of this? _Ah. If we get through._

 

He shuddered. How had any of them gotten here— wherever here was? Whatever it all meant?

 

“Hongbin,” Taekwoon murmured, “You’re sure….”

 

“Yep,” the navigator calmly replied. “You’ll definitely want to back us in.”

 

Taekwoon nodded absently, drifting the ship lower and lower to the ground, until the velvet of the savannah became grass, dotted with low shrubs and the occasional small, wind-sculptured tree. They were almost directly over it before any of them saw the gradual, slow swell of a solitary hill in the landscape, fitted perfectly into the fork of a cerulean river. It was a anomaly in the otherwise-flat landscape. But there was nothing to indicate it was any kind of a station.

 

Taekwoon looked over his shoulder at Hongbin, eyebrows raised. Hongbin looked back placidly, until the copilot sighed, and faced forward again. Hands moving in the green light of his console, he guided the ship in a circle around the low swell of the hill, several hundred yards from its apex. Once, twice, three times. And then they reversed, circling twice in the opposite direction, at the same distance. When they reached the point where the ship had begun its circles, he turned them sharply, to cut directly across the top of the hill, almost skimming it. And then they stopped, hovering, at the perimeter of the field they’d drawn. Hakyeon tapped on the display controls, and they all looked to the view screen, now showing the hill directly behind them.

 

“Holy fuck,” Sanghyuk breathed softly, as one side of the hill silently disappeared, leaving a huge, black, neat hole gaping in the earth.

 

“No wonder no one can find it,” Wonshik mused. “The whole thing’s like a primitive combination lock.”

 

“But hyung,” Sanghyuk pointed out, “If anyone sees a ship coming in, they’ll see how to trip the whole thing.”

 

Wonshik shrugged, clearly impressed despite himself. “It’s a military base. Not a lot of strangers dropping in. Every ship gets a different code, same code won’t work twice in a row.”

 

“So who generated this code?” Hyuk’s question met nothing but shrugs from his shipmates, until he looked at his captain’s impassive face. “Oh, right. Your spymaster.”

 

“Good guess,” Hakyeon replied smoothly. “But no. Justice An handed over the keys herself.”

 

“What about whoever Altamont is sending?” Taekwoon asked. “How will they get in?”

 

“They won’t. Not with their ship. We can open up enough to let their personnel in, but that’s it. So they won’t be able to spring any heavy weaponry on us.”

 

“And they agreed to this?” Taekwoon asked in ill-concealed amazement. “You keeping them out there while we’re in here?”

 

Hakyeon’s voice held more than a trace of smug amusement. “That part never precisely came up.”

 

“With their ship outside, and them inside, well. Anything could happen.” Amy’s disembodied voice surrounded them, her body sitting quietly in the lounge, where there was considerably more space.

 

Hakyeon’s lips curved slightly in a chilly smile. “Indeed. Taekwoon, back us in, will you?”

 

As the ship slid into the cavern, darkness moving sharply over them, the only sound in the cockpit was Hongbin quietly murmuring readings to Taekwoon from the 3D visualisation of the landing bay that filled his console. Without a word, Taekwoon set the ship down gently in the centre of the hangar: a space large enough to hold at least three ships _The Baegilmong_ ’s size, now echoingly empty. A ring of bright white spots lit up around the edges of the grey, streamlined space as they touched down, showing wide, doorless tunnels leading off and down, further into the ground: unlit and foreboding. There were no other ships, no equipment, not even dust. Jaehwan rolled his shoulders to stop his skin from crawling; Wonshik shot him a knowing look. The whole place was creepy.

 

The silence around them grew tight, until Sanghyuk cleared his throat, the sound staccato in the dim, close air. “Uh. So…now what do we do? Just sit here?”

 

“First, we make absolutely sure we’re alone,” Hakyeon replied, his voice quiet but firm. “Amy?”

 

“We are. No life readings save ours within range.”

 

“Mm. Then we close that door.” He jerked his chin towards the vast hangar opening, and Jaehwan couldn’t help a shudder: having the sun blocked out wasn’t going to make him feel any better.

 

Hakyeon and Taekwoon were rising from their seats, and Jaehwan’s eyes instantly caught the dull sheen off the grip of Hakyeon’s gun in its thigh holster. Hakyeon didn’t miss the look, but his own expression was closed, now, the set of his shoulders all business.

 

“Every one of you will be armed,” he said. “In-ears as well. Let’s go see what’s out there. And get that door closed.”

 

Jaehwan lagged behind the rest as they filed out the door, winding their way down to the airlock in the cargo bay. Amy joined them, eyeing him, but saying nothing. He was glad: he didn’t mind her questions in general, but right now he felt too keyed up, too surreal. The danger of the approaching Altamont ship was distant, even fuzzy, but the thought of having a gun in his hand made him feel as if he were about to shiver right out of his skin. It was worse than sitting behind the controls of the ship’s weaponry; this was much more personal. More human-scaled. More visceral.

 

Still, when Hakyeon, who was pressing his fingers to the print-reader on the gun safe as Jaehwan came down the last few stairs, actually handed the younger man a weapon, Jaehwan kept his face as impassive as possible. Hakyeon said nothing, but the look in his eyes left no room for talking, anyway. Jaehwan turned away, fitting the smooth holster to a comfortable spot on his right thigh, tapping the control on his skinsuit that would meld the holster to him until he was done with it. The weight of it dragged far heavier than its physical form would allow: he felt off-balance and clumsy. He felt wrong. He pulled his tiny in-ear out of an equally tiny pocket on his bicep and busied himself getting it situated almost undetectably in his ear. It made him feel ever so slightly better. Illogically safer.

 

“You’re still monitoring?” Hakyeon said quietly to Amy.

 

“I am. We’re still alone.” She had smoothly pressed a holster to her own thigh: angled, Jaehwan noted, for a quicker draw. He wondered how she’d determined the arrangement: had she downloaded a manual of self defense? Watched instructional holos? Action movies? Or was it simply her own logic? Whatever it was, she was far more at ease with a weapon than he would ever be.

 

“Let’s go, then,” Hakyeon said crisply, breaking his train of thought.

 

Taekwoon stepped into the captain’s path with a slight shake of his head. “You don’t go first.”

 

Hakyeon drew in a breath, but the second in command stared him down almost blankly, until Hakyeon sighed. “Fine, fine. Get on with it.”

 

Taekwoon snorted what might have been a laugh, and, gun drawn, slipped out the lock.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He shrugged, laying the last of six bottles down in the grass, where they refracted purple light back from the sun. A moment’s focus, and he was done. But he paused, running a finger down the curve of one textured bottle. “How do you prepare, though, when you don't have any experience in a situation, and you don’t have any idea what you’ll do?”
> 
>  
> 
> She reflected a moment, her head slightly tilted and the tips of her bobbed hair brushing across her skinsuit. “I’m not much use to answer that,” she finally said, her voice wry. “Every situation is new for me.”

Amy had never seen a sky before.

 

It hadn’t occurred to Jaehwan until he saw her moving out of the human-sized portal they’d left open after finding the controls to the hangar door and securing it. But as the sharp line of shadow fell off of her shoulders and she raised her face into the light, he was struck with a feeling approaching wonder, even if it were an emotion she couldn’t feel herself. Yet.

 

He stood beside her quietly for a moment, watching in compersion as she seemed to drink in in reality what she’d only ever experienced before in the holo worlds he’d created.

 

After a considering silence, she turned to face Jaehwan, who raised an eyebrow in inquiry. Her mouth turned up gently. “I would not wish to cast aspersions on your work,” she murmured. “But to see this, its progenitor…it is revelatory.”

 

“I’m really glad. And not in the slightest offended. If you have any ideas on how I can improve, I’d welcome them. Well…you know, if we don’t all…if we need me again,” he finished awkwardly.

 

She nodded. “I can’t sense any ships in our immediate vicinity. And Wongeun’s upgrades gave _The Baegilmong_ considerable range. For the moment, we are quite safely alone here.”

 

“Excellent.” Hakyeon stepped around them, emerging from the hangar holding a smooth-sided cube, roughly a meter square, in soothing blues, with a jaunty, bright red handle. “We have time for lunch.”

 

Ahead of them, Sanghyuk’s head snapped around, and a huge grin bloomed on his face. “Someone thought ahead,” he said cheekily.

 

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks. Come get this.” He heaved the cube towards Sanghyuk, who bounded back to retrieve it like a puppy.

 

“You get paid, hyung? Must be nice.”

 

Hakyeon aimed a swift chop at their youngest’s neck. “You’re getting expired game coupons for your next paycheck, you little rat.”

 

Hongbin’s laughter rang out. “Ooo, he knows where to hurt you, Hyukkie.”

 

“And I know where to hurt you,” Sanghyuk shot back, setting the cube down on the grass.

 

Jaehwan’s mouth twisted in a wry smile at his bickering shipmates, envying them their apparent nonchalance while a hostile ship bore down from an indeterminate distance. He glanced up on impulse, but the sky was blue and clear, and the sun-warmed grass was beckoning. And apparently his services were needed.

 

Hakyeon tapped buttons set into the top of the blue cube, and pulled several large, colourful blankets from the door that dropped down one side of it. Hongbin took it upon himself to set them out on the grass, flapping them in the air to spread them out like enormous kites, bright against the sky. Inevitably, one errant corner caught Taekwoon across the face, and in mere moments, a full-on battle ensued, the two of them snapping blankets at each other with deadly accuracy and bright laughter. When he thought no one was looking, Sanghyuk sidled up to the portable holo cube and programmed in pillows, not expecting Wonshik to grab them from his hands and use his own ostensible weaponry against him. Hyuk managed to fend him off long enough to generate more pillows, and the battle escalated to all-out war.

 

Hakyeon, Amy, and Jaehwan watched the other four young men in their stark black skinsuits playing like children, hurling insults and home goods at each other, forming alliances and switching sides indiscriminately. Fondly, Jaehwan dragged the cube to a safe distance and set to work, creating and magic-ing a decent lunch for them all. Whatever was going to happen, they’d have a nice picnic first.

 

The conflict was all but won, Wonshik and Sanghyuk having divested Taekwoon of his pillow and thrown it outside the range of the holo cube, where it snapped out of existence, when Hongbin looped a blanket around Wonshik’s knees and yanked his legs out from under him. Sadly, he’d miscalculated, and his more muscular shipmate toppled over directly atop him, knocking the wind out of both of them. Taekwoon, distracted, let his guard down for a bare second, but it was more than enough for Sanghyuk to dart closer to his hyung, grab him around the waist, swing him in a broad circle, and bodyslam him to the earth, where the Second-in-Command howled pitifully as if every bone in his body had shattered. Panting in the grass, the other three combatants mocked him wholly without mercy, until all four giggled themselves into a truce.

 

Jaehwan’s hands, full of sandwiches, stilled as he watched them. _My family_ , he thought fondly. _They’re idiots, but they’re my idiots. They’re my family._ But even as the thought ghosted through him, a breath of fear followed it, high up in his chest, and he looked away, finding Hakyeon regarding him with one eyebrow raised and a knowing expression. Jaehwan dragged his attention back to the plate in his hand, closing his eyes and drawing in his focus. When the tingling cleared, he handed the plate to Hakyeon with a bright smile. His captain’s expression hadn’t changed: his elder was looking right through him. Jaehwan sighed.

 

Hakyeon rose, calling out to the crew to properly organise the blankets and pillows and behave for once in their lives. Jaehwan programmed in drinks for everyone, idly rubbing at his chest, where the tight, cold feeling refused to dissipate. There was the light pressure of a hand on his shoulder, but he kept his head down, not trusting himself to keep all the clamoring and confusion inside.

 

“Worrying, at this point, will not help you,” Amy said quietly. “Though I’m sure this is something you have heard many, many times in your life.”

 

He shrugged, with a faint smile. “And you’d be completely right. It was my mother’s favourite litany.”

 

“And it never worked, I assume.”

 

“That would be correct.”

 

“I can only suggest that you prepare yourself as best you can, and then trust you’ve done all that is possible beforehand.”

 

He shrugged, laying the last of six bottles down in the grass, where they refracted purple light back from the sun. A moment’s focus, and he was done. But he paused, running a finger down the curve of one textured bottle. “How do you prepare, though, when you don't have any experience in a situation, and you don’t have any idea what you’ll do?”

 

She reflected a moment, her head slightly tilted and the tips of her bobbed hair brushing across her skinsuit. “I’m not much use to answer that,” she finally said, her voice wry. “Every situation is new for me.”

 

At that, Jaehwan had to laugh. “There’s some perspective for me,” he snorted. “Come help me pass these out.”

 

 

 

 

Sanghyuk and Wonshik were arguing.

 

“It’s a battle cruiser,” Hyuk insisted.

 

“Where are you even coming up with that?” Wonshik scoffed. “It’s a bottle of Essian wine. It’s even got the little thinigie on the top of the bottle.”

 

Jaehwan snorted at the both of them. “You’re both completely wrong.”

 

“Oh?” Sanghyuk drawled. “Do enlighten us, hyung. What is it?”

 

Jaehwan shrugged. “It’s a cloud.”

 

The pillow to his face was, perhaps, inevitable.

 

It gave him an excuse, however, to stand up, mock-pouting, and huff at them all. “Just for that, you can clean up by yourselves. I am retreating to my evil lair to plot my evil revenge.”

 

“You’re going back to your lab to goof off,” Taekwoon snorted.

 

“Same thing.” Nose in the air, Jaehwan spun on one heel, stalking off in a puff of grand theatrics.

 

“Don’t forget to put your in-ear back in,” Hakyeon called after him. Jaehwan waved over his shoulder, not bothering to turn.

 

Back in the cool dimness of the hangar, he paused, looking up at _The Baegilmong_ , crouching silently in the shadows. Her lines were short, even choppy, but as a whole, her curves hung together in a way that was fluid and dynamic, her hull a soft gleam somewhere between deepwater grey and chocolate. The new guns seemed jarring to him, breaking up the grace of her silhouette, but he supposed he’d have to take the hit to his sense of aesthetics if he wanted to stay even remotely safe. If she ever got into the sky again, that was.

 

Jaehwan groaned at himself. He was supposed to be the optimist, the mood-maker of the crew. The bright spot. Moping dramatically wasn’t supposed to be his metier. It would be fine, he promised himself. Today would be bad, and frightening, but he trusted his crewmates and his captain, even if he hadn’t the remotest trust in Altamont, and they would, in the end, all be fine.

 

Wouldn’t they?

 

He wasn’t the ship’s resident computer expert— Wonshik would always have the edge on him there, and Sanghyuk was nipping at his own heels— but he felt safer doing something: going over the ship’s computers himself one last time, trying to poke holes in the carefully-crafted smokescreen they’d laid throughout the systems. Navigation, communications, even the holo generators: they all bore traces of something having been there, something possibly lurking there still, but elusive, slippery. Whoever or whatever Altamont sent, it would waste enough time trying to track down whatever they thought was there that the hidden ship with the cavalry on it— Justiciar An and her crew— would have time to swoop in and arrest everyone. If their plan held.

 

Amy, of course, wasn’t there any more to find. Though her link to the ship remained active, none of her programming remained in the ship itself, anywhere. It wasn’t a perfect solution: it slightly lessened her ability to interact with the ship, and increased her response time for controlling _The Baegilmong_ by some nanoseconds. Which would probably matter to her, but not to anyone else.

 

As a familiar fluttering sounded behind his head, brushing his hair against his ears, and a comfortable weight settled around his neck, he grinned wryly. Okay, almost anyone else.

 

Absently stroking Koyangi’s smoothly-textured hide, he pushed further into the computers, checking and rechecking, smoothing the trail in some places, roughing it up in others. He and Wonshik had been thorough, he knew. There was little left for him to do, now, if anything. This was busywork, and he was fully aware of it. But eventually, he looked up, and was surprised to realise how much time he’d wasted doing it. The better part of an hour had slipped past him, unnoticed. And with a groan, he realised he’d completely forgotten Hakyeon’s last admonishment.

 

He stood up with a stretch, twisting the knots out of his neck with several loud pops, his fingers pushing the tiny unit into his ear and tapping it on.

 

Nothing.

 

He frowned. There should have been a series of tones, each indicating his shipmates were online, on the same channel. But there was nothing.

 

There was nothing.

 

Coldness seized up in his guts, pushing his stomach towards his throat as he tapped the unit again, trying different channels. Each one: dead. He felt his suit kick on to warm his suddenly-freezing skin as he forced his newly-stiff fingers to return to the main channel. And then, of their own accord, those fingers slid down to his thigh, curling around the grip of his gun. Tightly.

 

It kept them from shaking.

 

A wave of his other hand closed all the computer screens, locking the systems as a whole. It was the equivalent of a hook latch in the face of a battlecruiser, but it would buy time. Maybe that would be good for something. He slipped to the door, bypassing the automatic controls to slide it open a fraction manually. He could hear nothing from the hall, nothing from the ship. The fleeting thought that he was overreacting died in his brain almost before it could form. No— something was wrong. He knew without question. Sliding the door closed once more, he flipped through the channels on his earpiece again, his whole body jerking in shock as a flood of noise overwhelmed him.

 

It was his crew. And they were screaming.

 

His vision went white, he couldn’t feel his body, couldn’t feel the wall against him, couldn’t feel his feet on the floor.

 

The screaming coalesced into words, and slowly, jaggedly pierced the whiteout in his head. Voices— individual voices. His captain, his commander, shouting over the percussive blasts of weaponry.

 

“Wonshik! Get the doors! Get the doors!”

 

And Wonshik, his voice ragged and hoarse, “I can’t— they jammed everything and I don’t knowh—”

 

And the line went dead again.

 

Jaehwan blinked. Dragged air into his hollow lungs. One breath. Two. Three. Each exhale clearing his head a little more. _Think, think, think. Try to reason this out._ At least two of them were alive. At least. If Wonshik was the one saying “everything” was jammed, it was likely he meant electronically— communication with the base, the doors, the ship, each other. If it had been Sanghyuk, he likely would have said “ _They’re_ jammed.” And Hakyeon hadn’t been talking to Sanghyuk. His brain shied away viciously from any other reason Hakyeon might not have sent an order to their youngest.

 

So. If he’d caught even one moment of communication from outside, it meant everyone else was following ship’s protocol and switching channels in an effort to get through, to find some back alley Altamont hadn’t discovered yet. And it wasn’t working. Which in turn meant there was little likelihood he’d be able to contact anyone else outside. Including Amy. And it meant there was no way anyone would have been able to contact their cavalry, waiting off-planet to rescue them.

 

There was no one.

 

There was him.

 

And now he heard it, felt it: the particular sound of the airlock in the main bay opening, then closing again. Voices. Strange, harsh voices, violating his space, his home. Not his crew, not his brothers. His brothers were gone. And in their places….

 

He was cold again. Chilled through. But now the cold was animate: pushing to the last cell of his body, lifting him, filling him. He slid his gun out of its holster smoothly, and slipped out the door into the hall.

 

They would go straight to the cockpit, he was sure of that. And if they were there, there was no chance of him getting to the new guns. Though they wouldn’t do much good inside the ship. So there was no point in even trying to get up there. He could likely get to the main airlock in the bay, and get off _The Baegilmong_ unnoticed: out into the hangar, out onto the planet. But now there was little point to that, either. There was nothing out there for him any more. Still. _The Baegilmong_ ’s own bay did offer one thing he could use.

 

Ears attuned to anything and everything, he made his way, fast, to a smaller room a dozen meters down the corridor, fingers flying over the control of his skinsuit as he went. He couldn’t completely hide his biometric signature from the ship’s sensors, but he could dampen them, and hope no one on the bridge was looking for anyone left inside the ship. For all they knew, there were only six crewmembers, and outside, there had been…it would have to do. He prayed they weren’t looking at the tiny lights in an unobtrusive corner of the cockpit that alerted anyone paying attention that there were doors opening elsewhere on the ship.

 

Once inside the darkened storage locker, he made a quick calculation. There wasn’t much in here he knew how to use, but it was all effective. He could work with it.

 

He didn’t expect his own gun would be needed long enough to run out of charge, but just to be sure, he pulled an identical model from its slot on the wall, fixing it to his thigh just below his existing holster. On the wall opposite, a clip-filled belt, to which he attached half a dozen smoke bombs. An electrical flash charge into his wrist pocket. He might not need everything, but at least he’d have it. And the vague outline of a plan. It was messy, but that didn’t matter. Back out in the hall, he took one last look towards the door of his lab. No. Messy wouldn’t matter.

 

He rubbed his cheek against blue scales, felt them tremble against his skin. No time to go back.

 

Pausing in the doorway of Wonshik’s office, he tried to tap into the ship’s internal intercoms, figuring at least its hard-wired system would be working. Sure enough, he could hear voices: at least five, four likely male, one indeterminate. One seemed to be in charge, and Jaehwan’s jaw clenched automatically: whoever he was, he was giving orders on Jaehwan’s ship. And that was unacceptable.

 

It was clear they were sloppy: they didn’t seem remotely worried about anyone else coming after them. And they weren’t talking about searching the ship.

 

They were talking about launching it.

 

“You have the codes?” said the one in charge— Jaehwan’s teeth were set on edge by the sound of his voice.

 

“Yes, sir,” replied a subordinate.

 

“Ready to go, sir,” said a second.

 

“You know how to get us up?” their commander asked, his voice borderline unconcerned.

 

The second voice echoed his tone. “These ships are pretty basic, sir. And they didn’t even lock the board. It’s too easy.”

 

“Well, no one said they were smart,” said the commander. “Get the hangar open. Let’s go.”

 

Jaehwan could hear the snickering. He closed his eyes, feeling nothing but the cold roiling inside him, the clinical knowledge that he would do what he had to. Was this what Hakyeon had seen in him? How ironic. He had loved to hear people tell him he was right. Jaehwan took another breath, setting his shoulders, and slipped down the hall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He was close enough now to hear their voices in the cockpit. The one in charge, the one whose voice set his teeth on edge— sounded angry. Two of the others were talking back, alternating between frustrated and placating. Jaehwan could only make out a few words, but it was enough. They could see where their illegal cargo had been— where Amy had been— but they couldn’t see anything there now. Nor could they figure out where it could have gone. So that would leave two controlling the ship, and two at the computers, with their leader overseeing them all. But that was no good. He didn’t need them all in the cockpit. He didn’t know where they were taking the ship, or why, and at this point, it didn’t matter. But he needed them out of there.

 

Just outside the cockpit, there was a small service shaft. Wonshik had told him ages before what it was actually for, but it was infamous for the time Sanghyuk had filled it with a pack of very angry sandhoppers he’d picked up on some planet. They were small, furry, and harmless, except for their high-pitched squealing, which Hongbin had described as having shards of glass shoved into your ears. Jaehwan remembered how Hyuk had laughed as the creatures spilled down the shaft into the cockpit. How his eyes had turned to dark crescents in his face as he’d howled at his hyungs’ panic.

 

He dropped the first smoke bomb in, hearing it rattle as it spun and bounced down the shaft and hit the cockpit floor, hissing suddenly as it went off: thick grey smoke jetting out of it in all directions. Startled cries, followed by coughing— the charge had done its job. Sprinting away, he launched himself over the railing of the stairs down to the cargo bay, landing heavily, but letting his suit take most of the shock. In seconds, he was down two more flights, racing for the main console, and opening its command field. Faintly, he could hear furious shouting from the cockpit, and as his hands flew through the green light, he smiled slightly, bringing up the subset of controls to open a channel into the ship’s intercom system.

 

Let them come.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I wish we’d never taken that fucking job.” Amy’s look of wonder as she stared at the sky sat like a stone in his ribs. “What a waste. She lived. She lived. But you’ll never get her back. At least there’s that.”

Jaehwan stood at the main console in the bay, hands flying through the control field faster than he could consciously direct them. The walls of the bay seethed and shimmered around him, snapping in and out of existence in a blur. It would have made him dizzy, but he wasn’t looking: too busy configuring and modifying, calling up creations from assignments all through his years on The Baegilmong. He’d kept them, of course. All of them. And he remembered them all in painstaking detail.

He was coldly efficient as he worked, tension rigid in his shoulders as he listened for any sound of company coming, eyes flicking to the extra window he’d opened on the side of his work field— so far, he’d managed to fuck up the sensors enough that they wouldn’t be able to see him from up top, but it was a flimsy defense, he knew, and if they tried, that wouldn’t last long. Not that it mattered: he could see them running down the corridors, tiny blue lights in a panic, moving through the ship away from the heavy, acrid smoke that must have been overpowering in the tight confines of the cockpit. They didn’t know what had happened, he was sure. He smirked joylessly: they would soon enough. A tiny pressure against the angle of his jaw, and he stroked his chin against blue scales.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

And opened the ship’s intercom.

“What the fuck are you doing on my ship?” he roared, throat burning, feeling his voice come back through the walls and the floor, vibrating through every bulkhead and panel. With a flick, he disabled the jammer on the location sensor, knowing if they now checked any of the auxiliary panels in the corridors, they’d see they weren’t alone. And they would see exactly where he was. 

But he wasn’t intending to make any part of this simple. As he saw the blue lights converging and coming towards his location, he configured the final series of holo bulkheads in the bay: a smooth, featureless wall between him and the bay’s entrance, and an open space from which led four open doorways: each one deliberately dark. They wouldn’t be able to see him, but the implication he could be found down one of the lightless corridors would be far too tempting for them to resist. Still, a bit more incentive couldn’t hurt.

“I know where you are,” he hissed into the com. “I know what you’re after. And you’ll never get it, you incompetent fucks.” He closed his eyes for half a second. Hakyeon would have scolded him for cursing on the com. Sanghyuk would have encouraged him.

He could hear them, now. He’d left the main door open between the bay and the rest of the ship— open wide, taunting them. It worked: the five of them were just there, there on the other side of the holo wall he’d thrown up. It would look like a perfectly normal part of the ship to them. He put a hand on the smooth surface beside him: it was solid and cool under his fingers. So, so solid. He felt a shudder ripple across his skin, though the bones of his chest. Like fragments of glass through his brain came the image of Sanghyuk’s eyes: dark crescents as he laughed with his whole body. Hongbin: laughing and cringing as his ears flamed pink from his brothers’ teasing. The wide-eyed look of confusion on Ravi’s face when he surfaced into a conversation after the joke— often at his expense— had sailed over his head. Taekwoon’s stone-faced instigations. Hakyeon’s giggles. And Amy— the bright, short arc of her life in its shining, sharp flash. HIs long fingers curled into a fist against the wall until his nails bit into his palm.

The com was still open, and he could hear their commander, voice rough from the smoke bomb and raw with anger. 

“Who are you? Where are you? Come out! Come out and show yourself!”

Jaehwan snorted. “You’re a coward and a thief. You pathetic nothing. You couldn’t find me with a map shoved up your ass.”

There was a moment of silence, then a strangled growl from the commander: “Fuck this. Find him, and kill him.”

There was a smattering of stuttered “Yes, Sir”s, and the clattering of boot heels along the corridors. Jaehwan’s eyes slipped closed for the briefest moment— he could see his shipmates, could hear them screaming. There were flashes of blood and burnt flesh— no. And it wouldn’t matter, soon. Coldness settled down against him again more heavily. It wouldn’t matter.

They skidded to a stop in the vestibule he’d created. He could hear their commander dividing them, and he breathed out slowly. Two went together down one passage, one each down the others. Good. Exactly. Exactly. And now it was time.

His whole brain seemed to slow down— to empty, almost. And to darken. His fingers began to move again, flashing through the green light as he warped and changed the bay. He could see them, moving down the new corridors, away from each other. They had no way of knowing he had created these walls moments before. No way to know they weren’t real. And it didn’t matter. They’d be more than real enough for this. Jaehwan’s eyes narrowed, and he let the darkness dig in deeper.

Silently, he put walls behind them, blocking them in. They wouldn’t know until they tried to get out. Tried.

The first corridor— two of the intruders were there. He would deal with them first.

He raised the ambient light in the section of the bay where two blue lights shone on his board. They would see now they were in a small room— no more than three meters square. With only one door. He heard them cursing, heard them open a channel to their commander. Heard them try to explain where they were. He heard their confusion. It was time he heard their fear.

He made the chamber two meters square, and kept his fingers in the field.

Their voices were panicked now, their resolve breaking, and he was grimly satisfied. That had taken no effort at all. 

But their commander was harsh. “There’s a door there— what are you waiting for?”

“But there wasn’t a door before, sir, and— did it get smaller? Did it— what— Sir! The chamber just got smaller again!” 

“Go through the damned door, and report back here!”

“Y-yes, sir!” Jaehwan heard the door open. Heard their gasps of surprise. And heard their screams— cut off abruptly.

Their commander heard, too. “What? What is it? Report! Nilssen! Ossof! Report. Report!”

They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t report again. Because beyond the door was the habitat Jaehwan had created for the Vikan tigers they’d transported six years ago: a jungle, dense and cloying, air heavy with heat and humidity, thick undergrowth and tall trees obscuring any kind of path. While researching what the massive animals would need, he’d come across crumbling but visceral myths of an ancient method of hunting them: the tiger pit. Sanghyuk had been fascinated by the concept, even if he’d been skeptical. “How would that even work? How would you get the tiger there in the first place?”

It had been fast: Jaehwan had made sure it would be. Nilssen and Ossof would not be reporting.

There was a churning inside Jaehwan— something black and cold and nauseating, but he pushed it down, brushed it off. It was surprisingly easy to do. There was an echo of raucous laughter in the back of his skull, shadow plays of late night dinners and days of rough camaraderie, and he shut that way, too. It didn’t matter any more. This was all he could do for them now.

The remaining two officers were terrified. He could hear it in their voices as they begged their commander for direction. He heard muffled thumping, and he knew they, too, discovered they were locked in small chambers in the dark, each alone. He brought up faint light in the second tiny room, and heard a broken whimper. 

“Sir, sir— there’s— there’s a door. I—”

“Get out of there, Harvald!”“There’s only the door, sir!” The man’s voice held an obvious plea. 

“Go through the fucking door! Get out!”

There was no other noise, save the slide of the door on its tracks. Footsteps. It was the habitat he’d created for the deep purple bioluminescent lichen the scientists on Ravel had been so desperate to get. Jaehwan had been so proud when they’d delivered it. Conditions had been so perfect, it had actually grown in transport. They’d earned a bonus, and all gone on vacation together, fittingly going rock climbing on Taris. Hongbin had scraped his knee open, and Taekwoon wrapped the joint so tightly the younger man had whined that the bandage was going to spoil his fun, not the wound itself.

“It’s…it’s a…it’s a cave, sir. I don’t see anything. There’s…something on the walls, and it’s glowing, but I don’t see anyone else here.”

“It’s just whatever they’re transporting! Keep going— there has to be another door.” The commander’s voice was tight, angry, and there was something about it, something now that seemed familiar in a way that made Jaehwan angry.

The officer’s voice was thin, unsure. “Yes, sir.”

Jaehwan’s hands moved again. There was a deafening rumble, and the whole bay shook. The sound of a scream was just audible, until it stopped short, bitten off within a second. Quick. So quick. The rumbling slowed, petered out. The silence was thick. One faint voice— that whimpering again.

“Gundfrid!” The commander’s voice was harsh. Jaehwan knew it would cut through the dark. But there was no comfort in it, and nothing anyone could do.

“S-sir.” 

“Where are you?”

“T-there are two doors.”

“Go through— the one on the left. Left!”

“What the h— it’s not gonna help!” Gundfrid was panicked. Jaehwan turned off the audio, watching the blue light that was the last officer, waiting for him to move. It didn’t matter. No matter how the commander directed him, it didn’t matter. Both doors went to the same place: the habitat he’d built for the Gold-throated Salamanders they’d carried two years ago. They lived in lava that had just begun to slow its crawl to the base of Arcturus II’s volcanoes. Ravi had watched the videos of the lava flow for hours, staring at the images meditatively, one hand idly moving over his sound unit, unconsciously creating a ghostly soundtrack for the scene.

He could hear the screams through the walls. But only for a moment. The blue light went out. At least it had been quick.

“Who the fuck are you?” came the harsh voice again, twisted in rage. “Who the fuck are you?”

Jaehwan knew. Suddenly he knew. Knew why this voice set his teeth on edge instantly, filled him with so much anger. He leaned closer to the console, right into the mic, his hands shaking and his voice near-strangled with rage as phantom sensations bloomed through the bones of his face.

“You know exactly who I am, Berglund, you son of a bitch. And I know you.”

His fingers flicked through the green light, slicing into the control field as if he were cutting flesh. He couldn’t see, the left side of his face burning with remembered pain. It didn’t matter: he didn’t need to see for this. The last bay formed and filled on the other side of the bulkhead beside him.

“You little shit,” Berglund breathed through the com. “Why the fuck aren’t you dead?”

“Like everyone else? Like everyone else you killed? Fuck you, Berglund. My captain—” his voice almost caught, but he pushed on. “My captain told me once he knew I could kill someone if I had to. I didn’t believe him. I guess he was right, though, wasn’t he?”

“My ship will be here any second, and they will blow your fucking ass out of the sky if you kill me.”

Jaehwan shook his head, a small, frozen laugh stuttering out of his chest. “So? I don’t care any more. At least I’ll die knowing I got rid of you first.”

It was too much. “Show yourself, you little fuck!” the enraged officer screamed. “Show yourself so I can kill you!”

“Fine,” Jaehwan said flatly. “If that’s what you want.”

His fingers flicked one last pass through the control field, the wall beside him disappeared, and the lights came up.

There was a flash, a bolt of light, and one corner of the console before him exploded, hot metal spraying across the right side of his face— instantly, he felt the hot, wet slide of blood seeping down his cheek. But he didn’t care. 

He’d outdone himself this time, sudden horrific inspiration driving him. And it was so simple. He almost laughed again, looking at the other man, his faded blue eyes widening in fear as he froze, every muscle locked, one hand curled to whiteness around the grip of his gun, the other reaching for support that wasn’t there. He was trying desperately to keep his balance as he suddenly discovered himself to be standing on a catwalk no more than eight inches wide, barely a meter up over a vast tank filled with water— and a dozen high-strung, nervous Corillian Star Swimmers.

“I wouldn’t try that again,” Jaehwan noted. “The recoil should have knocked you right off. The next time will, I’m guessing.”

Berglund’s face turned grey, and his fingers loosened on the gun until it fell from his slack fingers, narrowly missing the bodies below, and disappearing into the water with a heavy splash.

“It’s fitting, isn’t it?” Jaehwan continued, his feet carrying him out from behind the ruined console. “This is what we were transporting before we met you. I wish we’d never taken that fucking job.” Amy’s look of wonder as she stared at the sky sat like a stone in his ribs. “What a waste. She lived. She lived. But you’ll never get her back. At least there’s that.”

Grief and rage coursed through him, overpowering, rising up in a choking rush and closing his throat. He fell to his knees at the edge of the tank, his skinsuit sliding on the wet deck, its coldness seeping through him too fast for the suit to match. He reached into the water, trailing his hands through it, feeling the movement of the animals in the tank, feeling their strength and their rising fear. His eyes slipped closed as he sent everything he was feeling out towards them, emotions so brutal they felt as if they were exploding in bright fireworks through his skin. It didn’t matter that he’d created the animals minutes ago out of nothing. They were real enough right now to do what he needed, and he was past caring about what it made him. It was too late. Just too fucking late. His fingers trembled, tingled in the water. Everything he was would be lost along with his brothers, dead on the planet below. Somehow, it seemed fitting.

“Get who back?” Berglund was hissing just above him, frozen in place. “You stole a program from us and you stupid pricks couldn’t even keep it on the ship! Where did it go?”

Jaehwan shrugged, his voice low and broken. “It doesn’t matter any more. None of it matters. She was amazing, and you killed her. But she was amazing first.”

“Who the fuck are you talking about?” Berglund was nearly screaming in frustration, and the animals below him began to churn, hissing and spitting, their wide, paddle-like hooves frothing the water as they jerked against each other, eyes white-rimmed. The tops of their heavy skulls were inches below Berglund’s thick boots.

“Like I said,” Jaehwan shook his head. “It doesn’t matter any more.”

“What do you want?” Berglund switched tactics, his tone wheedling. “I can get you whatever you want. You want another lab? A bigger lab? I can do that. You— I don’t know how you made a holo bay real, how you killed them, but— we can make it go away. We could use you! You’d have anything you want— you’d be rich and you’d have everything! You— how did you even do this?” The man’s pale eyes darted around the bay, across the water and the mass of limbs below.

Jaehwan looked down at the sleek aqua skin of the Star Swimmers. “I’ve always been good,” he said absently. “You just don’t understand how to use a holo for the right things.”

“What— what are the right things? We can do that! We can do the right things!” His voice was edged in hysteria now.

Jaehwan sagged, feeling the weight of so many deaths piling onto his shoulders. The right thing? He was too far past that. There was no right thing any more— not for him. He’d buried himself. Buried himself in death and bloody, animal, horrific revenge, and there wasn’t any coming back from that, back to who he had been. None of it mattered any more. Altamont had killed his brothers, his sister, and just as surely killed him. There wasn’t anything left of worth in him any more— he was flooded to the roof of his mouth with self-loathing and shock.

He reached into the small pocket on his wrist, pulling out the small, flat disc of the electrical flash charge. He spun it in his fingers, its distinctive metallic blue surface glinting prettily. 

Berglund's eyes widened, he visibly swallowed. “My ship will be here in seconds,” he blustered, his voice rising. “Don’t— don’t do— we can work it out, we can—”

Jaehwan flipped the charge into the water.

It wasn’t a high-voltage charge. It wasn’t long-lasting. It didn’t need to be. It was a sharp sting, and that, combined with the screaming man above their heads, was the final straw for the animals in the tank. With nowhere to stampede, they thrashed against each other, turning the water to foam as they reared and kicked and seethed, crashing into each other, the walls— and the narrow beam just above them. 

Jaehwan’s face was blank as he watched Berglund topple, arms and legs convulsing in desperation for the fraction of a second it took for him to fall into the grinder of panicked creatures below. This time…this time, it wasn’t quick. His ash-white face surfaced a handful of times, garbled screams coming from the stretched black hole of his mouth until the sounds were replaced by blood. The noise of the animals, their high-pitched, echoing squeals, their fear and their twisting, panicked limbs, drowned his voice as surely as they drowned his thrashing body. Jaehwan saw the other man’s face one last time, a hand reaching for him, a flash of desperate blue eyes— and then a flush of red began to spread through the water. 

Jaehwan dropped his head into his hands and fought not to sob.

 

 

He’d only been there for minutes— seconds, perhaps— when the alarm sounded. The proximity alert. He was on his feet before he knew he’d moved, his body reacting before his brain could. The Star Swimmers were driven even more mad by the piercing noise and the flashing light, and Jaehwan hesitated, his hands twitching towards the still-smoking control panel. But the siren was too loud, too urgent, and on autopilot, he found himself running back through the ship, up the stairs, into the cockpit. And there, through the thick canopy, he saw Berglund’s ship bearing down on him, the lights of its cannons already beginning to pulse.

There was a flutter at his shoulder, and he turned his head, just for a moment burying his face in cool blue scales. 

“I’m so sorry, baby,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. Will you forgive me?”

Her swirling eyes looked up at him solemnly, and after a moment, she reached her fragile head forward, and stroked the top of her skull along his jaw.

He took a deep breath, trying to pull air through the thick weight of fear in his chest. His arms, his hands, the rest of his body all felt hollow, barely responsive, as if he were out in the black. Everything he’d shoved down, run roughshod over since he’d come back on the ship what seemed hours ago on the planet— what had he done? Oh, G-d, what had he done?— rattled inside him and made it hard to walk the straight line to the new seat beside Hongbin’s abandoned station. 

The chair welcomed him, comforted him, wrapped the safety straps around him like a caress. The display slid across his face, superimposing itself over the sight before him: the bulky, ominous Altamont ship, guns nearly at full glow, aimed directly at him. Their meaning was clear: if they couldn’t find Amy, they’d destroy all traces of her. 

Jaehwan stretched his hands forward, into the green light of the controls. Hakyeon had been right: he had no choice. And he could do this. He angled his jaw against Koyangi, feeling her tremble.

I’m so sorry.

He fired.

He had time— a second split ten thousand ways. Time to see the cannon fire crossing, bolts of blue-white light against blue green. Time to see the bloom of fire against black. Time to throw up his arms, fingers scrabbling at his throat, time to start a scream. And then the concussive blast of his ship ripping apart around him sent him spinning, the shields of his suit whining in protest as they flung up a barrier around him, deflecting fire and debris and shockwaves— too little, too late, he knew. 

Body rigid, lungs useless, eyes wide and staring, the last thing he saw as his skinsuit began to process emergency shield protocols to send him into hibernation— useless: there was no one left to find him and he would never wake up he would never wake up he would never— was shreds of blue in his blood-scored hands, and a delicate skull that stared at him in reproach, trailing colourful wires like bright lace against the black of empty space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was traveling again. I got to go back to Korea-- three weeks this time. I thought I'd get writing done while i was there, but no. I spent a ton of time sleeping, unfortunately. Still recovering from that stupid cancer thing. I really, really don't recommend it. (The cancer, I mean. Sleeping is awesome.) Seriously. But I saw beautiful things and I'm still grateful. Interestingly, I didn't go to any of the memorials for Jjong-- couldn't handle it yet. But I did go to the Lantern Festival at Cheonggyecheon Stream and Jongyesa Temple. I think that counts.
> 
> Anyway.
> 
> As for this ever-expanding missive, I thought fourteen was going to be the penultimate chapter. Ha. I should have known. But soon. SOON.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She held up a hand to forestall him. “Our crew is quite well. Perhaps a bit shaken, but physically, entirely fine. There have been, perhaps, some…interesting developments, but I’m not the one to tell you about them.”
> 
> His breath quickened, heart thudding. “Are you sure everyone is okay?”
> 
> Her mouth twisted into a faint, considering frown. 
> 
> “It’s not anyone else, Jaehwan,” she said. “It’s you.”

He woke crying.

 

His brain recognised the thick, cloying, half-speed feeling of coming out of a skinsuit-induced coma. Lying somewhere in a bed. His skinsuit was off, and the feel of sheets on his skin was disconcerting, made him feel vulnerable. There was low amber light around him, and no clues as to where he was: just a small room, blank and featureless, with the bed and a blocky monitor on a tall metal stand beside it, lights pulsing in time with his heart. As his mind became clearer, the lights spiked: emotion and memory slammed into him like a boulder launched off a cliff, so hard into his chest he coughed and gasped: dead. His crew dead. Those others, dead. Amy dead. He had killed. He had murdered. And his brothers and sister were dead.

 

He gasped, his body curling up agonisingly, sobs fighting with breath as faces flashed through his brain, his lungs locking up until only tiny whimpers came out of his throat.

 

“Nope. Not again,” said a quiet voice he half-registered, from somewhere behind him. “Jaehwan. _Jaehwan_.”

 

“Do you want me to—“

 

“Not this time. Jaehwan, listen to me. Focus. _Focus_ , Jaehwan. Come on.”

 

There were arms around his shoulders, supporting him, and a voice he knew. He stared, wide-eyed into the dimness, his vision blurry and wet, until a blur resolved into a face.

 

Hakyeon.

 

He was stunned into fragile, shivering stillness. “Y…you died— all— you—“

 

In the dim light, Hakyeon’s body in its skinsuit faded away, seeming to leave only a floating head.

 

“No, Jaehwan. We’re alive. All of us.”

 

“But— you— but you all—” He couldn’t compute. Couldn’t work it all out.

 

Hakyeon’s quite voice was soothing. “No, we’re alive. Promise. Amy sustained some damage, but she’s repaired now. We think they meant to leave us there til we died, if they couldn’t kill us all first outright.” He shrugged. “Their priority was the ship. Once they had it, they didn’t care if we lived or not. But we’re all here. We’re okay.”

 

For the second time, his head filled with the sounds of screaming— this time, he didn’t even know their names. Horror slowly began to seep through Jaehwan’s skin, sliding over him in a sheet of cold, wet, shivering ooze until every hair stood up and he felt like his bones were trying to vibrate apart. “But I killed them, Hakyeon,” he whispered. “I thought they had killed all of you, and I killed them.”

 

Hakyeon’s eyes were deep, full of pity and compassion, and far too much understanding. “They did try, Jaehwan. They wanted to. And once they had the ship, they meant to kill Amy, too.”

 

The words seemed distant, confusing, inadequate. He had thought the officers had killed his crew, and he had killed the officers. The ones in front of him— he had never even seen their faces! He had even killed the ones on their ship. He had killed all of them. His family was alive. But he had killed.

 

The clammy feeling against his skin increased, making him colder and colder, until his body began to shake uncontrollably, jerking in Hakyeon’s arms in convulsions, curling up tighter and tighter until there was no room for breath or even thought.

 

“I killed them, Hakyeon. I crushed them and I— shot the— I killed them!” He clutched at the older man’s shoulder, fingers skidding across nanotech fibers. “They’re dead, they’re dead because— I—“

 

Another voice again. “Okay, now, I think we need to—“

 

Hakyeon answering. “Yeah, quick—“

 

And everything faded gently away into black.

 

 

 

 

 

When he woke again, the light was slightly brighter, and his mind felt less precarious. With a start, he twisted around to look behind him— not Hakyeon, this time. Now it was Amy, sitting quietly in a chair, still in her skinsuit, her hair longer now and pulled back into a bun. She smiled at him gently.

 

“How do you feel?” Her voice was quiet, neutral.

 

Jaehwan opened his mouth to answer on instinct, but made the mistake of thinking a moment too long. There was too much, now, in his head, and he was tired, so tired, of letting emotion overwhelm him. He sank back into the pillows. There was fear and horror and a towering mountain of guilt, but just for a moment, just for a short window, he didn’t want to think about any of it. It lay sour on the back of his tongue.

 

“Better,” he said simply.

 

Amy only nodded. “We thought it would be better if you didn’t wake up alone.”

 

He grunted noncommittally, slowly easing himself up to sitting. It was strange to feel the sheets sliding on bare skin— no skinsuit, no pyjamas. It left him feeling raw and exposed when all he felt like doing was hiding.

 

“How long have I been out?”

 

“Roughly a day.”

 

“Roughly?”

 

She hesitated a moment. “The explosion was thirty two hours ago.”

 

There was silence as his jaw clenched and his eyes slid shut, his brain trying not to slip into more guilt, more shadow.

 

The bed shifted as Amy came to sit by his feet. He looked up, half-afraid he would see something different in the way she looked at him, but her expression was placid. Even comforting. Still, he shied away from her gaze. How could he deserve comfort?

 

“Where…where are we?”

  
  
“On Justiciar An’s ship.”

 

“They finally decided to show up?” he asked bitterly.

 

She nodded. “As it happens, the agents sent by Altamont came prepared to silence and eliminate us. They were equipped with heavy signal jammers, which made it impossible for us to communicate with each other, or with this ship. They also arrived cloaked— not as good a technology as ours, but good enough. Weapons fire on the planet set off internal alarms in the military base. The alarms were broadcast on a tightly-controlled military-only band. Not that it mattered: by the time the Justiciar’s ship arrived, the conflict was all but over.”

 

His eyes flicked up to hers, but she remained impassive.

 

“What are you not telling me, Amy?”

 

She cocked her head. “What do you wish to know?”

 

“I…don’t know. But there’s more, isn’t there? What happened? Just…tell me. Is everyone— I mean, did I—“

 

She held up a hand to forestall him. “Our crew is quite well. Perhaps a bit shaken, but physically, entirely fine. There have been, perhaps, some…interesting developments, but I’m not the one to tell you about them.”

 

His breath quickened, heart thudding. “Are you sure everyone is okay?”

 

Her mouth twisted into a faint, considering frown.

 

“It’s not anyone else, Jaehwan,” she said. “It’s you.”

 

 

 

 

His small room had an even smaller bathroom attached, and he carefully made his way to the shower, the aftereffects of the induced coma still leaving him shaky and feeling as if he didn’t quite fit into his skin. It had been a week or so at least since he’d had an actual shower with real water— skinsuits kept the body scrupulously clean, and an ion washer for his hair was generally all he needed no matter what he put in it— but guest quarters on a government ship felt luxurious compared to his own berth. His chest twinged at the thought of his own bed, now scattered to atoms across empty space. He hadn’t kept many souvenirs of much worth from his travels, but there were a few mementos it hurt to lose.

 

And he remembered the delicate swirl of blue scales and thin wires trailing through his fingers. He put his head against the cool composite wall of the shower stall, and some of the water running down his face was salt.

 

It took a long time to feel he was steady enough to face anyone, but he didn’t have a choice: Hakyeon had requested to see him, and Jaehwan got the impression it was more a politely-worded order than anything else. He stepped out of the shower reluctantly, padding back into the bedroom to the side table where a thick black armband lay. He slid it up his wet arm to his bicep, tapped his finger to a small fingerprint-locked button, and his skinsuit flowed out across his body, drying and dressing him in one smooth motion. A mirror on the wall showed the damage to his face from the exploding control board: he ran his fingers over it lightly. It was high up along his cheekbone, and he noted with grim humour that at least he was balanced, now. But like the earlier damage, once the nanotech treatments were finished, this would leave no scar. For that small mercy, he was grateful. He didn’t mind playing a space pirate sometimes, when the occasion merited. But he had no desire to permanently look like one.

 

A knock at the door— quiet, but firm.

 

“Come in, Captain.”

 

Hakyeon came in, his eyes already appraising. “You look…well. Marginally better, I suppose.”

 

Jaehwan snorted, turning back to the mirror. Hakyeon’s lack of enthusiasm for his appearance was justified, he supposed: his skin was still pale, his lips bloodless. The stark red, fading gash across his cheekbone stood out fiercely on his skin while his eyes looked sunken in. With his wet hair hanging against his face, he looked tired. He looked lost.

 

He pushed a hand through his hair, raking it back. “Well, you know. Hard day and all,” he shrugged, forcing some lightness into his tone.

 

His captain quirked an eyebrow and made a noncommittal noise before turning and heading back for the door. “Come on. We’re about ready to dock.”

 

“Dock where?”

 

Hakyeon glanced around the room quickly. “You’ll see. Come on. Besides: a good brisk walk will do you good.”

 

Jaehwan’s eyes flicked over the room as well as he followed the other man out. It made sense, he supposed, that their rooms would be bugged. Whatever was going on, they weren’t quite out of it yet.

 

The corridors outside his room were quiet and sleek, each door fitted with a medical information screen beside the frame. Ah. Hospital wing. He was about to ask Hakyeon where everyone else was, but a look at the robustly blank face of his captain kept his own mouth shut. Soon enough, they were in a more active part of the ship: uniformed officers, maintenance workers, support staff, and likely dozens upon dozens of lawyers: all the hundreds of lives necessary to keep the physical embodiment of the rule of law in the air. The massive cruiser wasn’t nearly as heavily armed as a warship, but it was perfectly capable of enforcing the judgments of its courts. Jaehwan wondered if, somewhere in those courts, someone had already filed on behalf of their rogue AI.

 

A few minutes’ more walk through the corridors brought them to an open, high-ceilinged room with a vaguely official air: the main personnel lock. The rest of the crew was waiting there, fidgeting and looking somewhat aimless, and with a cry, Wonshik launched himself out of one of the high-backed chairs against the wall and locked Jaehwan in a bearhug.

 

“G-d, man, you— you fucking nut job. I can’t believe you— you just— fuck.” Jaehwan felt the strain in his ribs, but clung right back. They weren’t dead. His family, and they weren’t dead. He’d done terrible things, but they were here, they were whole. If he himself was broken, he didn’t care. They were here.

 

Another pair of arms came around his shoulders from behind, and another from the side, and Jaehwan let his body go lax, tremors running down his arms and up his spine: this was what he’d needed. His brothers around him. He was safe, and he was, for the moment, himself whole. Relief ran through his veins like cool water, and there, in the middle of a full crew group hug, he was fairly sure he wasn’t the only one crying.

 

“Gentlemen.” Amy’s voice was quiet. Jaehwan blinked water from his eyes, looking up. Justiciar An had joined them, watching politely from the archway that led back into the ship. Hands folded behind her back, her spine was as steel-straight as before, her dark blue on-board uniform as spotless and crisp as her dress uniform had been on _The Baegilmong_. On this occasion, however, she was alone.

 

Hakyeon stepped back from the huddle, his eyes slightly pink, but his expression pleasant. Taekwoon and Wonshik turned away, rubbing surreptitiously at their eyes and looking studiously at nothing. Hongbin and Hyuk patted Jaehwan’s arms and his back, wordlessly reassuring both him and themselves that they were all of them indeed in one piece.

 

“Justiciar An,” Hakyeon was saying, smoothly turning to their ostensible host, deftly turning attention away from Jaehwan as the latter took a breath and tried to compose himself. “I have to thank you for getting us to our destination so quickly.”

 

Under cover of the Captain’s well-timed formality, Jaehwan stepped closer to Amy. “I owe you a hug, too,” he whispered. “Wait— do you hug?”

 

She was thoughtful a moment. “You know, I don’t know. I’ve never hugged anyone.” With a smile, she reached out and put her arms around his shoulders.

 

He hugged back, amused with himself for absently thinking she would feel plastic, feel metallic. She felt human: warm and alive. She felt like family. “You _are_ family,” he said. “And I’m really glad.”

 

She laughed just a bit as he stepped back. “As am I.”

 

On the other side of the room, Hakyeon’s eyes caught his over the Justiciar’s shoulder, silently speaking a warning. Jaehwan frowned. _What did I do this time_?

 

“Well.” A moment later, Hakyeon was there beside them. “Shall we? Not as if we have a lot of luggage, I suppose. We have us, our skinsuits. Our Defense Operator ServFig.” He nodded towards Amy, and it clicked for Jaehwan how they had concealed the stolen AI, right under the Judiciary’s nose, on their own ship. No better place to hide a lie than within the truth. They hadn’t quite lost everything. Jaehwan nodded back dumbly, playing along.

 

Still, Hongbin and Sanghyuk exchanged a look somewhere between grim and wistful, and Jaehwan felt a pang, remembering their haphazardly-decorated quarters, filled with figurines of holo heroes the both of them had loved to collect, now scattered to atoms. With luck, they’d be able to re-download some of their mementos to the ship’s printers, but some, he knew, would be impossible to replace. The little things, the small detritus of years of travel, of living. The bits of detail around the edges of their lives. He couldn’t tease them: he wasn’t sentimental himself, but the fact that some of his brothers were was just one of the many reasons he loved them so much. And he wasn’t entirely unscathed. All of them had lost something. He rolled his shoulders to dispel the feeling of absence, the missing weight.

 

Justiciar An was looking them all over with an expression Jaehwan couldn’t quite read. She smiled, just slightly.

 

“I want to thank you all again for your assistance. As of forty minutes ago, we have a provisional search warrant for all Altamont locations. I thought you’d appreciate knowing before you left.”

 

“Fuck them up for us, would you?” Sanghyuk said bitterly. Taekwoon’s head snapped around, and he hit the younger man on the arm.

 

But the Justice only smiled. “It was your body cam footage in particular that helped most. You were the one close enough to hear them talk about taking the ship, and of killing all of you.”

 

“Well,” their youngest snorted. “Glad I could be of some help.”

 

She nodded. “Your cargo’s already been transferred safely. I’m only sorry,” she said, eyeing them, “that we were unable to retrieve the stolen item Altamont was so keen to reclaim.” As she spoke, her gaze trailed over all of them, settling in the end on Amy, and lingering.

 

Jaehwan’s heart thumped, and he could feel heat seeping up his neck. He forced out a snort, and met the Justiciar’s eyes when she turned. “Well, you know: my first time in a big space firefight, I wanted to make sure I really did it up, you know? I’m just…sorry I got our home blown up in the process.” His eyes trailed over the rest of them, and the guilt in his own expression wasn’t forced at all.

 

Hakyeon moved forward to sling an arm around his neck, pulling him towards the airlock door. “Yes, we’re going to have a talk about that, don’t worry. Thank you again, Justiciar. If we can be of any further assistance, you’ll know where to find us.”

 

And with the rest of the crew following, the captain dragged Jaehwan through the door.

 

They left much of the inevitable stiffness of being under the heavy eye of the Judiciary behind as the first door slid closed, all of them exhaling into soft chatter as they moved through the starkly-lit transitional space of the gangway. There was a shuttle at the other end of the lock, and no sooner had the seven of them stepped on board and strapped themselves into its large, soft grey, overstuffed seats than the pilot and navigator in their well-fitted blue and grey uniforms undocked from the towering cruiser and pulled into open space. Jaehwan could almost feel his shipmates’ tension unwinding, relaxing. Wonshik in particular kept petting Amy’s arm as she sat beside him, seeming to reassure them both that she was safe, and still with them. She smiled back at him knowingly. Hongbin and Sanghyuk bickered good-naturedly, if tiredly. Taekwoon appeared content merely to watch,pushing a toe into one or the other’s knee if their barbs got too sharp.

 

Jaehwan turned to Hakyeon, strapped in next to him, and whispered, “So…cargo? What cargo?”

 

Hakyeon’s jaw slid forward, and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You’ll see.”

  
  
“Are you telling me not everything was destroyed?”

 

The captain’s eyes flicked towards the cockpit, and Jaehwan was bewildered. If something had survived the blast that atomised _The Baegilmong_ and very nearly him, why should it be secret? Granted, he hadn’t been at his most observant in the moments he had floating in space before his skinsuit shut his body down inside its protective field; he hadn’t even noticed the massive Judiciary vessel bearing down on him, but surely he would have noticed if the big titanium shipping crates his crew used were floating past him, right? Then again, he knew they hadn’t had any shipments. There wasn’t anything in the bay, except the havoc he’d wrought himself. On cue, he remembered the screams of the churning animals, the blood in the water, and sat back in his chair, cold seeping across his chest. It was becoming a familiar sensation.

 

Hakyeon said nothing, running his fingernail along the edge of the seatbelt holding him in, not meeting Jaehwan’s eyes. In fact, no one now was saying anything, all of them having gradually spun down into silence, and as he looked around, his brothers’ eyes seemed to have the same thoughtful look as Hakyeon’s as they stared back at Jaehwan. The cold on his skin intensified.

 

The shuttle banked quickly, and he turned, glad to look away, pressing a hand against the porthole beside him. His eyes widened, but he knew he shouldn’t have been that surprised to see a familiar space station looming over them, tall and imposing and completely invisible two minutes before. They were already angling towards the smooth expanse of docking bay door that was sliding open for them, light spilling outward across the dark. 

 

A quick glance back showed none of his crewmates so much as batting an eye. All right. He was the last to know— it was only logical, considering he’d been unconscious most of the last day. But his list of questions was growing longer by the second, and as soon as they were off Judiciary property— well, then it’d be Wongeun’s bugging he’d have to worry about, he supposed. He closed his eyes and suppressed a grim sigh. Where there was Wongeun, there was intrigue. Life had been ridiculously simpler a month ago.

 

The shuttle touched the bay floor with an expertly faint thump, and Taekwoon, impressed despite himself, grunted in approval. Hongbin and Hyuk were already by the door, and the rest of them were only a little slower to follow. Hakyeon brought up the rear as the door slid open, thanking the two-man crew before following his own out. The generic officers barely flicked a glance at their departing passengers, already starting procedures to take off again.

 

Wongeun was waiting for them just a few yards away, an almost incongruously serene smile on his face, starkly contrasting the reserved, exhausted expressions of his new guests. He had his hands clasped behind his back, and Jaehwan got the distinct impression he was forcefully keeping himself from bouncing on the balls of his feet. He felt a slight resurgence of his initial irritation with the man: after all they’d been through, to see him cheerful and flippant set his teeth on edge.

 

“Well. So that didn't go as planned, did it?” Wongeun raised his voice to carry over the sound of the shuttle slipping away back home behind them.

 

Sanghyuk attempted to stifle a growl, and was unsuccessful. “We’ve had better missions, yeah.”

 

“We’ve sure as fuck had ones with a lot less murder,” Wonshik snapped beside him, his teeth, too, seemingly set instantly on edge by their host’s jaunty greetings. At Jaehwan’s involuntary flinch, Wonshik turned to lay a hand on his friend’s shoulder, looking stricken. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean…it’s just a bad week. I mean— fuck.” His ears reddened, and Jaehwan could see the wild churning behind his eyes as he cast around wildly for something inoffensive to say.

 

“It’s okay. Really. Don’t worry about it.” Jaehwan swallowed hard, ignoring the tightness in his chest, the heat on his face.

 

“I’m sorry,” Wonshik said quietly, remorse thick in his voice and his eyes.

 

Jaehwan shrugged. “Over and done now.” It was a lie, but it’d do for the moment.

 

Hongbin, too, reached for Jaehwan’s shoulder, one side of his mouth twisted up in a rueful smile. “I’d suggest you hit the holo with me and Sanghyuk and play something mindless and stupid, but.” He shrugged regretfully. “That’d require us having a holo, still.”

 

Wongeun had sobered, closing the distance to them in a few strides, his face stricken. “Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make light of everything. I know what you’ve been through and I’m glad you’re all here— you especially, Amy.” She nodded at him, the blue-black curtain of her bobbed hair swinging, but her eyes revealed nothing, and she said nothing. “And I’m sorry about your home. I know how much it meant to you all. I didn’t mean to be dismissive. It’s just that…well, in this one particular, I do have something for you that I think might make you all feel better. I know it’s not the same, but.…”

 

As he trailed off, catching his lip between his teeth, he gestured behind them, and as one, the displaced crew turned. And there, rising above them, gleaming softly in the bright lights of the bay, sat a long, sleek, pristine new hybrid cargo/cruiser, and across its satin-gloss flank, soft gold lettering named it _The Baegilmong II._

 

“Holy shit, Hakyeon-hyung,” Sanghyuk breathed, his eyes full of awe. “How…I mean, did you know…?”

 

Their captain shrugged, his eyes running over the lines of the ship before them.

 

“I did tell you all I had insurance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! We're almost at the end! I can't believe it's been eleven months (and two days, to be specific) since I started this one. I envisioned it taking so much less time than the last one, but G-d disposes, you know what I'm saying? I've been sick over a month now, cos that's what happens when your immune system decides "Screw you guys, I'm going home." But all is improving, I'm writing again, and I'm rather excited to wrap this up. Look for the final chapter...soon.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What would you like to see first?” Wongeun seemed to be trying to look at them all at once.
> 
> It was Hakyeon who answered first, his tone almost resigned. “I think…I think we should probably see the cargo bay.”
> 
> There was an awkward silence, and Jaehwan felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

They wandered onto the new ship slowly, eyes wide. It was clearly an order of magnitude more advanced than their former home: sleeker, more airy, better organised. Where _The Baegilmong—Baegilmong I_ , Jaehwan supposed he would have to say now— was built for work and cargo first, passengers and crew second, _The Baegilmong II_ offered more human concessions. The lighting was more artful, the palette more harmonious. There were more guest suites, and they were more appealing. There was even a lounge and small kitchen and private holo for passengers.

 

“It still has that new-ship smell, doesn’t it?” Sanghyuk mused, hands at his side as if afraid to touch anything.

 

Taekwoon hummed in agreement, reaching out to stroke a bulkhead, his expression thoughtful. “She’s beautiful,” he murmured, eyes full of stars.

 

“What would you like to see first?” Wongeun seemed to be trying to look at them all at once.

 

It was Hakyeon who answered first, his tone almost resigned. “I think…I think we should probably see the cargo bay.”

 

There was an awkward silence, and Jaehwan felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

 

“All…all of us?” Hongbin asked, his gaze flicking back and forth from Jaehwan to Hakyeon.

 

“Mm,” Hakyeon nodded, pinning Jaehwan with an inscrutable look.

 

Jaehwan took a breath with some difficulty— his lungs felt tight again. Whatever was going on, enough was enough. Faintly, he nodded back to Hakyeon.

 

Wordlessly, Wongeun walked past them, moving down the corridor towards the wide doors of a spacious lift. All eight of them fit with ease, but the space between seemed filled to the ceiling with tension. Jaehwan found the wall of the lift at his back and pressed himself against it. No one was quite meeting his eyes.

 

Except Amy: she was there, suddenly, putting a hand on his arm. “Don’t be afraid,” she said, her voice gentle, looking at him with both understanding and firmness. “I don’t know how much the promise of an AI is worth, but I promise you, you’ve nothing to fear.”

 

Hongbin made a strange, strangled noise he tried to turn into a cough, and his ears burned bright red. His eyes stayed fixed on the floor.

 

Jaehwan looked back at Amy. “Sure,” he said. “Sure.”

 

The lift doors opened, and Wongeun stepped out first, leading them into a bay that was, in comparison to their last ship’s, vast— easily three times the space they’d had before, which had been nothing to sneeze at. Wonshik let out a long breath and a whispered swear, awed at the sight. The others seemed equally as impressed.

 

But Jaehwan felt his heartbeat begin to thud again against his ribs, churn against his stomach. One section of the vast space was configured already: a high wall stretching thirty meters across the back of the bay, with an exterior staircase leading to a wide door halfway up. He stared at it, unable to look away. Amy touched his arm again; he was dimly aware she could pick up on his speeding pulse. But he couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t look at anyone.

 

The walk across the bay floor felt like it was taking forever, like his legs weren’t working, even though he was almost sure he was walking. Yet somehow, he was there at the foot of the steps. They were wide, dull silver, with textured treads. Pierced through, as if for drainage. He put his hand on the rail— it, too, was textured. Non-slip. He was climbing, then, still with that disconnect to his own legs. The door loomed up over him; it was all he could see. All he could focus on. Closer and closer it came, until he was standing right in front of it, his hand hovering, half-extended towards the hatch release. He swallowed, caught. It wasn’t hard to deduce that this was the last minute of an old life, and something new was through the door. But good or bad, or some combination he couldn’t fathom? He wanted to turn around and run almost more than he wanted to know. Though something prickled in his brain, now— some kind of prescience.

 

Hakyeon’s voice was quiet from behind him.

 

“When _The Baegilmong_ exploded, the Judiciary ship was right there. They were too late to stop Altamont, but right on time to save you. Your skinsuit shield protected you. And the ship did exactly as it was programmed to do in emergencies: threw up the same kind of shield around anything with a life sign. We all thought you were the only one left alive on the ship. But. You weren’t.” He faltered slightly. “We…don’t know how. But. You weren’t.”

 

The door wasn’t locked. Jaehwan pressed the release, the prescience sharpening, somehow knowing already what he would see.

 

A narrow walkway ran around the interior of the space inside. And below it, in a vast tank, the overhead lights gleamed off the wet skin of a placid herd of Corellian Star Swimmers.

 

 

 

 

 

He sat on the edge of the walkway, feet dangling far above the water, arms crossed over the lower rung of its railing, his chin resting on his wrists. Amy and Hakyeon sat on either side of him, in much the same positions. The three of them stared down at the dozen bodies below, lazily moving through the water, gentle waves rolling over their gleaming mottled blue skin. The sound of the water, and an occasional grunt or high-pitched whistle echoed in the huge space.

 

After a long time, Jaehwan spoke quietly. “‘No anomalies,’ hm.”

 

From the corner of his eye, he could see Amy nod slowly. “None, They were checked by a vet on the Justiciar’s ship, which seemed a natural enough thing to do. And Wongeun’s staff checked them again once they were loaded in. Down to a molecular level. They are completely normal, healthy animals.”

 

“It’s funny,” Hakyeon mused on the other side. “Sanghyuk had a whole backstory instantly, explaining why we had them in the hold when we were on such a” he snorted “‘dangerous mission.’ I had no idea he could lie so convincingly.”

 

“I didn’t think he could lie with a straight face,” Jaehwan replied.

 

Hakyeon shook his head. “I’m going to have to rethink my uses for that kid.”

 

It was Jaehwan’s turn to snort, then.

 

“You didn’t feel anything different when you created them? At all?” Amy asked again.

 

Jaehwan’s eyes fluttered shut, his mind skittering away from that moment, the despair he’d felt, the rage. “No. Not at all. I was…very emotional, let’s say. But I didn’t think I was actively using my magic.”

“And did you touch them then?”

 

He could feel both of them watching him now.

 

“I…not directly. I put my hand in the water. That was all.”

 

“What were you thinking when you did that?” Hakyeon asked. “What were you feeling?”

 

Jaehwan couldn’t stop himself from fixing his captain with a stricken look, but he tried to take a moment to collect himself before he responded. “That you…that all of you were dead. That he had killed you. That I was about to die, and it didn’t matter.” His voice dropped, but he managed to keep it steady. “That at least I’d kill him first.”

 

Hakyeon drew in a long breath, let it out through his nose as he put a hand on Jaehwan’s shoulders. There was sadness in his eyes, but also a weary sort of resignation. Not for the first time, Jaehwan wondered what else those eyes had seen through the years.

 

“Jae,” he said gently, “I’m sorry. You did the best you could with the information you had. And even had you known we were all still alive, I still think you did the only thing you could. If I’d been there, I probably would have _ordered_ you to do what you did.” His eyes moved back down to the amphibian cargo. “Though you certainly did it in your own way.”

 

Jaehwan set his chin back down on his arms. The coldness he’d felt across his skin so many times lately had settled somewhere inside him: empty and dark. He wondered what that hollow space inside him would do to him, now. How it would change him. He remembered his mother’s face when she first realised what her son could do. Had she ever wondered how far that power would go? What would she have done if she knew? How was he going to keep it all inside, and never tell her? Or the rest of his family? Because he couldn’t. He was uncomfortable enough with his ship-board brothers knowing.

 

“Are they afraid of me?” he whispered.

 

“Who?” Hakyeon asked gently.

 

Jaehwan jerked his head upwards— the rest of his crew having awkwardly but carefully gone to explore the rest of their new digs, leaving their captain and their AI behind to deal with Jaehwan without an audience. Each of them, though, had paused on the way out to meet Jaehwan’s eyes, touch him, reassure him everything would be all right, even though he himself just didn’t see how it was possible.

 

“No, they’re not,” Hakyeon said.

 

“Yes, they are,” Amy said, her voice overlapping.

 

Two pairs of eyes snapped around to stare at her.

 

She tilted her head, choosing her words carefully. “I realise that is an uncomfortable answer, Jaehwan. I wish it were different. They all still love you very much, but none of them are quite sure what you did, and it makes them cautious. They haven’t said anything, but I can sense it in their autonomic responses.”

 

He almost laughed at the insanity of it. “I killed I don’t know how many people, and this is what they’re afraid if?” He shook his head, numbness icing over the rest of his feelings. “I’m not sure what I did, either. I created holo animals. In the holo. And now they’re here, alive. I made something out of nothing. I made real animals. Was it a one-off? Was it because I was so angry? Am I gonna be able to do it again? Am I gonna be able to control it?”

 

“Don’t panic, Jae,” Hakyeon said soothingly to the rising note in the younger man’s voice. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. We’re not going to let anything happen to you.”

 

“This will require research,” Amy added, her voice equally soothing. “And I will assume you have a very nice new lab.”

 

Hakyeon nodded. “I told Wongeun to go all out. And when you take him off the leash, he really does go a little crazy. There’s probably some guilt in his motivation, too, but I’m okay with it,” he added sardonically.

 

Jaehwan swallowed hard, fighting to tamp down what he could. “I don’t know how to experiment on this without…i don’t want to feel any of that again. I don’t want to be so overwhelmed you need to drug me again to calm me down.” He took deep breaths, holding them in a moment before exhaling. Even the thought of it, the maelstrom of rage and despair and loss, made his stomach churn and his heart speed up. Made the coldness inside him stretch outwards towards his skin.

 

“I may have an experiment that might be…perhaps easier.” Jaehwan looked at Amy in surprise. It was unlike her to sound so unsure.

 

She reached into a pocket on the thigh of her skinsuit, and held out her hand to Jaehwan, dropping something into into his palm.

 

 _Of course_ , he thought dumbly, staring at Koyangi’s disembodied head.

 

 

 

 

Whatever had motivated Wongeun, Jaehwan was grateful to it. The new lab was considerably larger than his previous space, with discrete spaces for running multiple experiments at once. There was even a small office off to one side with a suspiciously long, comfortable couch— some designer obviously knew scientists who stayed up too late waiting for experiments to finish running.

 

There were several smooth, unblemished, gleaming white worktables, and a counter around the exterior of the main lab area containing instruments Jaehwan had considered buying, but had never been able to afford on his salary, fair as it was. And there were shelves, one of which his brain instantly told him would be perfect for a little bed. His heart stuttered, and he turned to the closest table, putting down the delicately sculpted head, its blue scales vivid against the white.

 

He pulled up a stool and sank down, contemplating all that remained of his beloved Koyangi. Her animated eyes were pathetically still, and the wires trailing out of her head looked like nothing so much as exposed nerves and blood vessels. It was disconcerting, to say the least. A brief tour of the ship just to familiarize themselves with its topography had taken up much of the afternoon, but Jaehwan, restless, had begged off early. The blue of her scales just seemed to fill his eyes no matter where he looked. It made him want to work immediately— before even seeing his new quarters. Somewhat ruefully, he reflected that it wasn’t as if he had anything to move into them, anyway.

 

Wordlessly, Amy had followed him to the lab when he diverged from the others. He supposed she already had the layout of the ship in her memory, and could see all of it no matter where she was. Here in the lab, she had pulled up a seat to a different work table, and, calling up a console, began to delve into the ship’s computers, discreetly giving him space. Again, he found himself marveling at her sensitivity towards complex emotions, especially considering the brevity of her life, and how much violence and fear and brute force had already filled it.

 

With a sigh, he called up a computer field, and began building new components.

 

 

 

 

 

It was easy to become lost in the minutiae of a build. He remembered, as he worked, the countless hours he’d put into each limb, each joint, each scale years before when he’d first built her. The new ship and its new printers were undeniably faster, but it still took time to create each piece he needed. That was okay, though: it was almost meditative, letting him focus on creating without leaving too much brain space for overthinking. Hakyeon’s words kept replaying in the back of his head, anyway: “If I’d been there, I probably would have ordered you to do it.” It didn’t absolve him of responsibility for what he’d done, but somehow, in a terrible, dark way, made him feel like he’d made the only choice he could have made. There was, if nothing else, a shred of peace in that. Soldering and connecting and fitting composite ceramic bones together filled up most of the rest of his synapses.

 

Still, after hours of work, all he had was a carefully articulated skeleton with electronic organs and a bright blue head: body slightly larger than before, longer— a bit wider here, a bit narrower there. The wingspan would be broader, too— only fair, since the new ship’s corridors were so much more expansive. There were upgrades: better sensors, quicker reactions, more intelligence. His darling had been wonderful just as she was, but he owed it to her to do what he could. And he was amused to find he’d made her teeth a little sharper, her claws a little longer.

 

He pushed himself up from the table with a sigh, catching his lip between his teeth, delicate instruments rolling idly across the pristine surface.

 

“Is something wrong?” Amy asked, pushing her now-shoulder-length hair back with one hand. The other, he noticed, her left, had a thick, silvery cable coming from the wrist, plugged directly into a port on her workstation.

 

He shook his head. “No, no. Just…there’s a lot to do. A long way to go to make her even close to what she was. And even if I get everything right, it’s not going to be entirely the same. She won’t be, I mean.”

 

Amy cast an eye over the attenuated form in front of him. “You’ve changed her physical parameters, and upgraded her electronics.”

 

He nodded. “That, too.”

 

“You meant something else, then.”

 

“Yeah.” He ran a finger along the sharp spine, feeling the top layer of skin just barely separate across the pad of his index finger. “I…this is so stupid. I…didn’t back her up.” It hurt to confess it. “I backed her up to the local drives, but it never occurred to me to back her up offsite. If there was a problem with the ship, I was just going to take her with me, so it never seemed essential. Her memory, her personality— all of her little quirks. Everything that grew organically over time. They’re all gone. I’ve cloned her, essentially, but she’s not the same. I’ll have her right here in front of me, but she just won’t be the same. I guess…I guess I miss her.” He saw Amy nodding from the corner of his eye, but when he looked up, she was unexpectedly smiling.

 

“What?”

 

“I think I can offer you some welcome news on that front,” she said, reaching out to disconnect the cable attaching her to her console and standing up. In a few strides, she came to stand beside Jaehwan, reaching out to his computer field. “May I?”

 

He nodded, and with a few deft gestures, she called up numerous directories, hundreds of thousands of files flashing past, until familiar patterns started to stream by, and he felt his jaw slacken.

 

“Are you kidding me? Are you— are you _kidding me_?”

 

The corner of her mouth curled up. “It seemed logical, considering the circumstances, to do a complete backup of the ship’s files. I concentrated on those files not associated with the actual operation of the ship, as it seemed likely if such a backup was needed, we wouldn’t have the ship itself. But such things as research files, encrypted personal files— things that also might not have gotten backed up offsite, considering the speed at which events took place.”

 

“You are absolutely the Queen of Understatement, Amy.”

 

“I will take that as a compliment.”

 

“By all means. Does the captain know?”

 

She nodded, watching the data flow. “I made him aware of the fact once we were clear of the Justiciar’s ship. I thought it might be prudent to withhold the information until then.”

 

“You are wise indeed. When did you even do this?”

 

“While we were outside on the planet’s surface. While all of you were eating and beating each other with cushions. Complete offsite backups are generally done when the crew is asleep, as you know. And I am afraid many of you have not backed up your personal files in…quite some time, shall we say.”

 

“Which means all the receipts for the collectible downloads Sanghyuk and Hongbin bought— that I know they didn’t save— are safe. And G-d knows what else, because no one around here is that careful. And Wonshik’s sound files? He was always complaining he forgot to save them offsite! Those too?” She nodded, and Jaehwan shook his head. “We don’t deserve you, Amy.”

 

She pretended to consider. “That might be true, but you have me, nonetheless.”

 

He grinned. “Your sense of humour is improving, too.”

 

“I have excellent instructors.” She tapped out of the files. “There. The base architecture of _The Baegilmong II_ is similar enough to _The Baegilmong I_ that none of you should have any problems finding your records and reorganizing what you need. I am sure you remember where you put your files on creating Koyangi in the first place, and” she navigated through to a block of files Jaehwan had not seen before “here are her most recent backups. You will be able to restore her completely from her activation up to just before the moment we were attacked.”

 

He blew out a long breath. “She’ll have no memory of it. She’s lucky.”

 

Amy nodded slowly, reaching out to touch the glittering spine. “She was an interesting creature, with a most elastic and intelligent mind. I enjoyed the small interactions I had with her. She always seemed to be a great deal more than the sum of her parts.”

 

It was true; he knew it was true. Seeing her now, stripped down to her literal bones, he wondered how much of her had been physical construct, and how much had been…what? Wishful thinking? Software glitches? His own personality that he’d…that he’d….

 

“Jaehwan? Your mouth is open, but I’m not hearing anything come out. …Jaehwan? Are you all right?”

 

Gathering the half-filled skeleton carefully into his arms, he cleared his throat awkwardly, trying for casual, and missing by miles. There were fractured thoughts and ideas slamming back and forth suddenly across the interior of his skull, and he almost didn’t want to look too closely, in case they disintegrated under too-close an observation.

 

“So…I feel weird asking this, Amy, but do you know where the holo is? Can you direct me?”

 

“Certainly.” Her expression was quizzical, but she seemed willing to withhold questions for the moment, leading the way through the door and down the corridors, still filled with that faintly antiseptic, chemical, new-ship smell.

 

Somewhere along the way, Hakyeon began to follow them. Jaehwan hadn’t noticed when, exactly, his arms full of skinless electronics and ceramic bones and his hands rubbing furtively at skeletal paws. He nodded absently at the captain, his brain whirring. Neither of his companions spoke to him, but both of them shot him nearly continuous, if furtive, glances.

 

It was almost ten minutes, now, to cross the length of the ship and descend its many levels to the holo suites. There were five of the cutting-edge suites, now. What luxury! But Jaehwan wasn’t fussy at the moment now— any holo would do.

 

Hakyeon reached over to press his hand against the latch, then quickly put in overrides to create a new account— Jaehwan hadn’t even had a chance to input his biometrics into the ship’s systems, yet. There would be time to complete all the fields later— the retinal scan, the DNA samples, the genetic plan: all the things that had to be physically entered into the shiny new locks and doors. For now, though, all that mattered was getting into the holo. His fingers tightened on the body he held, and this time, he felt more than the top layer of skin part.

 

His hand was at the holster for his PAU instinctively before his brain registered that it was long gone. Who knows where he’d lost it? Hakyeon offered up his own, and Jaehwan nodded tightly, already distracted. The unit was newer than his lost one, but he’d explore the differences later. Time to work. First, the lighting was terrible. And he’d need a table, at least….

 

Holo work was so much more fluid. So much faster. He sampled colours and textures and painted with them, matter coming off his fingers with gorgeous fluidity to cover the rough glitter of modules and wiring inside her. He sampled musculature from Koyangi’s previous body, from snakes and lizards, from creatures he’d met and dreamt of all across the galaxy. He shaped and reshaped her delicate head, the translucent span of her wings, the curve of her claws, the way multiple lids slid over her iridescent eyes and how the arch of her neck slotted into the curve of her long, narrow jaw. He didn’t worry about micro-gears, now, or jointed connections. He didn’t need logic and mechanical engineering. Not now.

 

Moments or hours, he didn’t know. He didn’t measure what was happening in minutes, but in progress: the flow from an inanimate object to something so much more. But not quite enough— she wasn’t quite there yet.

 

He stepped back. Enough time had passed he should have felt cramped, he was sure, but he didn’t. His skinsuit didn’t need to adjust his spine. There was too much energy buzzing through him. She was there. She was right there in front of him: standing on four perfect, clawed feet, wings outstretched, the blue of her scales shimmering into a faint purple here and there. Her eyes swirled slowly. She did not move. She could not: she was a shell, and nothing more.

 

The silence stretched. He could hear Hakyeon’s breath behind him— he’d called himself up a chair, and watched all this time without saying a word. Amy stood beside him, equally quiet. Both of them waiting.

 

He reached forward, to a spot in the center of her chest, where the scales were slightly larger down her belly. Held his finger a moment over a specific one, and with a faint pop, it pirouetted to the side, revealing a port. Amy stepped up, suddenly appearing beside him with her wrist extended, a slender silver cable running out over her hand.

 

His stomach pushed up against his throat, his whole body hammering in time with his heart.

 

He counted its beats, losing the number somewhere around 38 and starting again.

 

At 23, Koyangi chirped, shook her head, flipped her wings down along her spine, and leapt off the table to coil herself around Jaehwan’s neck, wriggling slightly to fit her new body into its comfortable old position.

 

There was a soft exhalation, a pleased sound from Hakyeon, and then a laugh— Koyangi had discovered the cable in her chest, and was chittering at it in annoyance.

 

“Darling,” Jaehwan murmured, unclipping the cable and clicking her scale back into place. She rubbed her head against his fingers, her chittering fading to contented warbling as she pressed closer for more attention. Her weight, warm and mobile around his neck and shoulders, made sharp, knotted things inside his chest loosen. He bent his head down a moment, pressed his fingers against her scales, and took a deep breath. And focussed.

 

There was a sharp exclamation from Hakyeon— Jaehwan could feel him stepping back, Amy going with him.

 

The empty, cold place inside him would never go away. He could scrub it like it was a stain, and it would never disappear. He had killed people. He could do nothing for them. But maybe, just maybe, he could make some kind of amends. He could reach past the edges of his power, into the dark unknown, the places he knew were there but had never explored, and maybe, just maybe, find something new. Something good.

 

His grief, he could use. His fear and sorrow, of course. They were clean and real, as much as they hurt. But his love he could use more: for his family, for his brothers and sister on the ship, for Koyangi, his delicate darling. He couldn’t go back and undo what he’d done, he wasn’t sure he wanted to, and he’d have to learn to live with that, but this here, right now, this he could apparently do, and he would, and he’d pay back some of that balance. He’d pay that, and he’d do what he could to pay forward, and he’d pour every last emotion into his magic, feeling it build and build up his spine, roaring and grinding up against his skull, pushing out across his shoulders, down his arms, until it was wailing out of his fingers, singing from his skin and his cells and everything he was and everything he wasn’t, flooding out into a slender, glittering blue body, until—

 

Until she looked up at him, cocked her head, and sneezed in his face.

 

Hakyeon’s eyes were huge, his face so pale his veins stood out. Hands unsteady, he reached out for his PAU on the table, fumbling with it before he could pick it up properly. Fumbling as he tried to use it. He couldn’t take his eyes off Koyangi, who sat up on Jaehwan’s shoulder to groom her new wings and examine her new claws.

 

But a moment later, he huffed out a disbelieving laugh, staring down at his PAU, and back up Koyangi. And, with an awed expression, at Jaehwan.

 

“You did it,” he said softly. “There are three life forms in this room. My G-d, Jae. You…you really did it.”

 

Jaehwan tilted his cheek against Koyangi’s smooth, scaled skin. He could still hear the faint sounds of minuscule servo joints and the whir of processors close beside his ear. And over it all: a heart that she did not have beat strongly.

 

He raised his eyes to meet Amy’s. She raised her chin and her lips curved just slightly.

 

“Do you want to make it four?” he asked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhh, it feels good to have this done. It's just over a year since I started it-- I didn't think it would take so long! But I'm pretty happy with it. My biggest regret is that I don't have a Koyangi of my own. Alas. It's 2018-- could someone get on that, please? I have her prototypes, here, and I love them dearly, but they tend to shed and leave hairballs on the carpet.
> 
> Anyway. I hope you've enjoyed this tale. I don't mind you sharing it if you have. Nor do I mind you telling me what you did and didn't like about it! The next one is buried in my head, gestating. 
> 
> Come find me on Twitter as MayFaireMoonB. 
> 
> Thank you for reading.
> 
> <3

**Author's Note:**

> I had to work up to a VIXX fic. I wasn't sure I could do it. I suppose it yet remains to be seen if I can.
> 
> As ever, this is Ninkakitty's fault.


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